Invited Paper EM-MoA6
Peter Mark Memorial Award Lecture - Novel Semiconductor and Epitaxial Nanocomposite Materials for Electronic and Photonic Applications

Monday, November 10, 2014, 3:40 pm, Room 314

Advances in electronic materials (specifically, semiconductors and nanocomposites) enable new device technologies and improve the properties of existing technologies. In this talk, I will present efforts within my group on the growth of new materials by molecular beam epitaxy and the resulting advances in solar cells, thermoelectrics, and optoelectronics.

Specifically, I will discuss two material systems: (1) nanocomposites consisting of metallic nanoparticles (such as ErAs and TbAs) within III-V semiconductors (such as InGaAs and GaAs), and (2) dilute bismuthide semiconductors in which bismuth is incorporated into III-V materials to reduce the bandgap significantly, with unique band alignments that cannot be easily achieved in other materials. In the former, the nanoparticles serve as buried Schottky junctions, pinning the Fermi level and significantly altering carrier dynamics. In the latter, we focus on In(Ga/Al)BiAs, where compositional variations permits independent tuning of valence and conduction bands.

Although these materials are built upon relatively-mature III-V systems, electronic, thermal, and optical properties can be quite different from those of conventional materials, with significant promise for applications in a variety of technologies. Understanding the properties of these materials enables the creation of designer semiconductors for particular applications of interest.