Disruptive development of van der Waals semiconductors by enabling anion-controlled functionalities

通过实现阴离子控制功能来实现范德华半导体的颠覆性发展

• 批准号: EP/X032116/1
• 负责人: Elisabetta Arca
• 金额: $ 49.77万
• 依托单位: Newcastle University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FX032116%2F1
• 关键词: Disruptive; development; van; der; Waals

Repercussions of the semiconductor manufacturing crisis in 2021-2022 have highlighted how much modern society depends on semiconductor technologies. Semiconductors are an important part of the UK economy, with a market worth around $8bn in 2020 and still on the rising. Semiconductors are fundamental components of electronic and optoelectronic devices thus playing a key-role in the advancement of a number of seemingly unrelated technologies such as the field of microelectronics, the renewable energy sector and the communication sector. Traditional semiconductors such as silicon are getting pushed to the edge of their physical limits by the constantly increasing and often conflicting requirements of modern devices. van der Waals (vdW) semiconductors and related two-dimensional materials (2D) can provide a solution to these challenges due their ability to overcome some of the physical limitations affecting traditional semiconductors.This EPSRC New Investigator Award will support the growth of the UK semiconductor department by designing mixed-anions vdW semiconductors with new and improved functionalities, and a scalable deposition method to produce them. Prime example of vdW semiconductors are black phosphorous (BP) or transitional metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). Most vdW materials are either metallic or insulating. Only few chemical families, such as BP or TMDs possess semiconducting properties and can be exfoliated to 2D form. This limits the functionalities that can be accessed to those available in these chemistries. The variety of functionalities available in vdW semiconductors can be drastically increased if we leverage the properties of multiple anions to design new materials with new functionalities. This was recently demonstrated for CrSBr, a rare case of 2D ferromagnetic semiconductor. I will further advance this field by designing new mixed-anion vdW semiconductors belonging to the family of metal chalcohalides and metal oxyhalides that display high mobility of the electrical carriers, non-linear optical properties and room temperature ferroelectricity. To boost the manufacturability of these materials, I will modify the Polymer Assisted Deposition (PAD) method to enable simultaneous insertion of multiple anions at once. This method is scalable and cost-effective, thus suitable to rapidly move across the technology readiness levels (TRL) scale towards industrialization. The PAD method will also be pivotal in allowing the chemical flexibility to design materials with targeted properties based on the unique physical and chemical properties of the incorporated anions. For example, in oxyhalides, the choice of the halide will determine the size of the material's fundamental band gap, determining the material's ability to absorb or emit a different portion of visible light. This enables an atomic control over the materials' properties based on the anion inserted. The relevance of these materials for the semiconductor industry will be finally demonstrated by fabricating current rectifying devices (e.g., p-n junctions), whose properties must be equal or superior to those of the industrial standard, silicon.

2021 - 2022年半导体制造危机的影响强调了现代社会取决于半导体技术。半导体是英国经济的重要组成部分，其市场价值约为2020年的80亿美元，并且仍在上升。半导体是电子和光电设备的基本组成部分，因此在许多看似无关的技术（例如微电子技术领域，可再生能源领域，可再生能源部门和通信部门）中发挥了关键作用。传统的半导体（例如硅）被现代设备的不断增加且经常相互矛盾的要求推向其物理极限的边缘。 van der Waals (vdW) semiconductors and related two-dimensional materials (2D) can provide a solution to these challenges due their ability to overcome some of the physical limitations affecting traditional semiconductors.This EPSRC New Investigator Award will support the growth of the UK semiconductor department by designing mixed-anions vdW semiconductors with new and improved functionalities, and a scalable deposition method to produce them. VDW半导体的主要例子是黑色磷（BP）或过渡金属二甲植物（TMDS）。大多数VDW材料是金属或绝缘材料。只有少数化学家族（例如BP或TMD）具有半导体特性，并且可以被剥落至2D形式。这限制了可以访问这些化学物质中可用的功能。如果我们利用多个阴离子的特性来设计具有新功能的新材料，则VDW半导体中可用的各种功能可以大大增加。最近证明了这是CRSBR，这是2D铁磁半导体的罕见情况。我将通过设计属于金属辣椒剂家族和金属氧气的新型混合胺VDW半导体，进一步推进了这一领域，这些半导体和金属氧气表现出高度迁移率，非线性光学特性和室温铁电位。为了提高这些材料的制造性，我将修改聚合物辅助沉积（PAD）方法，以同时同时插入多个阴离子。该方法是可扩展的且具有成本效益的，因此适合在技术准备水平（TRL）范围内快速移动到工业化。 PAD方法也将在允许化学灵活性的基于Incorporated阴离子的独特物理和化学特性设计具有靶向特性的材料方面至关重要。例如，在氧气中，卤化物的选择将确定材料的基本带隙的大小，从而确定材料吸收或发射不同部分可见光的能力。这可以根据插入的阴离子对材料的特性进行原子控制。这些材料与半导体行业的相关性最终将通过制造当前的整流设备（例如P-N连接）来证明，其性质必须相等或优于工业标准的硅。