Study of Surface Templates Nanomanufactured for Growing Single-Crystal Semiconductor Films

University Of California-Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz CA

Investigators

Abstract

An increasing interest and a strong need exist for technologies that enable highly scalable manufacturing of high-quality, large-area, low-cost substrates for manufacturing semiconductor films to meet the growing markets in a range of applications such as power electronics, optoelectronics, and energy harvesting with benefits of high performance and economies of scale. Examples include substrates to improve overall cost-performance of power transistors that handle a large amount of electrical power, of light-emitting-diodes that replace incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs, and, of solar cells that are affordable yet have exceptional performance. Despite the progress made at various levels for decades, a versatile manufacturing technology that meets a wide range of requirements for such substrates is still lacking. This project will pave the way for future deployment of a substrate manufacturing technology by utilizing materials with microstructures controlled through nanomanufacturing approaches. This research involves multiple disciplines of science and engineering including inorganic film synthesis, semiconductor film deposition, and material characterization. These disciplines will be integrated into curriculum development to provide hands-on research opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students at the home institution and at other local educational institutions that foster a large number of minority and economically disadvantaged students. Pioneering demonstrations continuously emerge in search of innovative approaches for heteroepitaxy of semiconductor films, which may offer a practical path for heterogeneous integration of dissimilar semiconductors in the future. The concept of employing a buffer layer inserted between a substrate and a film has been established as the most engaging approach from both technological and scientific standpoints. However, it relies upon the availability of single-crystal semiconductor substrates with physical properties not vastly different from those of films to be grown. This project aims at demonstrating a new perception of growing a single-crystal semiconductor film on a non-single-crystal arbitrary substrate using a single-crystal epitaxial template. The key lies in the single-crystal epitaxial template on which crystallographic registry is provided for the subsequent growth of a semiconductor film regardless of the properties of the underlying non-single-crystal arbitrary substrate. Two critical issues to be addressed are the formation of engineered-nanometer-surface structures that promote the formation of a single-crystal epitaxial template and the subsequent growth of a semiconductor film on the template, which provides an opportunity to acquire new knowledge in kinetics and thermodynamics governing the formation of a single-crystal epitaxial template on engineered nanometer surface structures and growth mechanisms of group III-V compound semiconductor films on the template.