Conducting polymer based biomolecular electronic devices

Biomolecular electronics is rapidly evolving from physics, chemistry, biology, electronics and information technology. Organic materials such as proteins, pigments and conducting polymers have been considered as alternatives for carrying out the functions that are presently being performed by semiconductor silicon. Conducting polymers such as polypyrroles, polythiophenes and polyanilines have been projected for applications for a wide range of biomolecular electronic devices such as optical, electronic, drug-delivery, memory and biosensing devices. Our group has been actively working towards the application of conducting polymers to Schottky diodes, metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) devices and biosensors for the past 10 years. This paper is a review of some of the results obtained at our laboratory in the area of conducting polymer biomolecular electronics.     

Recent development and status of magnetoelectric materials and devices

The magnetoelectric (ME) materials and related devices have been attracting increasing research attention over the last few years. They exhibit strong ME coupling effect at room temperature, and electric field control of magnetization or magnetic field control of ferroelectric polarization can be achieved. The ME coupling effect brings novel functionalities to develop ultra-fast, low-power, and miniaturized electronics. Recent progress shows the performance of ME materials is further improved and the materials are used to develop many new types of electronics such as high-speed memory, radio frequency resonator, compact ME antenna, and weak magnetic field sensor. In this review, we present the overview in those fields with emphasis on both the opportunities and challenges for the application of ME materials and devices in the cutting-edge technologies.     

Optical properties of hybrid polymers as barrier materials

The development of high barrier films for the encapsulation of organic electronics devices onto flexible polymeric substrates is attracting a considerable scientific interest, since it is important to protect the organic semiconductor layers of these devices from corrosion due to atmospheric gas molecule permeation. The barrier layers for encapsulation consist of a sequence of inorganic and hybrid polymer thin films that are deposited onto flexible polymeric substrates, such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET). In addition to their barrier response, these multilayer systems should also exhibit high transparency and good adhesion between the hybrid polymer and inorganic layers. The knowledge of their optical properties and the correlation of the optical response with their structure and the final barrier response are of major importance since it will contribute towards the optimization of their functionality. In this work, the optical properties of hybrid polymers deposited onto silicon oxide inorganic thin films that were grown onto flexible polymeric substrates, have been investigated by the use of spectroscopic ellipsometry in a wide spectral region from the infrared to the visible-ultra violet. As it has been found, the increase of the solid content in the hybrid polymers is associated with a reduction in the refractive index values. This behavior can be correlated to a lower density of the hybrid polymer, and furthermore to a poor barrier response, due to the less cohesive inorganic-organic bonding network. Finally, from the investigation of the optical response of the hybrid polymers in the IR spectral region has revealed information on their bonding structure that has been discussed together with their barrier response.     

Conformational defects in a conducting polymer

Electrically conducting organic polymers represent serious candidates for some of the electronic materials of tomorrow. The role of certain charge-carrying self-localized states, such as solitons, polarons and bipolarons, in determining the nature of the optical and electronic transport properties of these conjugated polymers is well established. These self-localized states are commonly referred to as ‘defects'. Recently, the list of possible ‘defects’ in these conducting polymers has expanded to include real defects which degrade the electrical properties, but lead to other interesting and potentially useful properties, such as colour changes.     

Ballistic conductance in quantum devices: from organic polymers to nanotubes

With the size of electronic devices approaching the nanometer scale, transition to self-assembly in molecular electronics systems appears to be technologically the next step to pursue. Quantum conductors with an especially high potential for applications are organic polymers and carbon nanotubes. The latter are being considered for use as both nonlinear electronic devices and as connectors between molecular electronics devices and the “outside world”. Depending on their internal structure and the nature of the electric contact to leads, these systems may exhibit fractional conductance quantization.     

Correlated Electron Materials and Field Effect Transistors for Logic: A Review

Correlated electron systems are among the centerpieces of modern condensed matter sciences, where many interesting physical phenomena, such as metal-insulator transition and high-T _c superconductivity appear. Recent efforts have been focused on electrostatic doping of such materials to probe the underlying physics without introducing disorder as well as to build field-effect transistors that may complement conventional semiconductor metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET) technology. This review focuses on metal-insulator transition mechanisms in correlated electron materials and three-terminal field effect devices utilizing such correlated oxides as the channel layer. We first describe how electron-disorder interaction, electron-phonon interaction, and/or electron correlation in solids could modify the electronic properties of materials and lead to metal-insulator transitions. Then we analyze experimental efforts toward utilizing these transitions in field effect transistors and their underlying principles. It is pointed out that correlated electron systems show promise among these various materials displaying phase transitions for logic technologies. Furthermore, novel phenomena emerging from electronic correlation could enable new functionalities in field effect devices. We then briefly review unconventional electrostatic gating techniques, such as ionic liquid gating and ferroelectric gating, which enables ultra large carrier accumulation density in the correlated materials which could in turn lead to phase transitions. The review concludes with a brief discussion on the prospects and suggestions for future research directions in correlated oxide electronics for information processing.     

半导体纳米材料和物理

半导体纳米材料是纳米材料的一个重要组成部分，纳米结构的电子和光子器件将成为下一代微电子和光电子器件的核心。文章介绍了半导体纳米材料研究的新进展，包括四个方面：半导体自组织生长量子点，纳米晶体，微腔光子晶体和纳米结构中的自旋电子学。本世纪开始的半导体纳米材料的研究是上世纪半导体超晶格量子阱研究的延续，同时又开辟了一些新的领域，如：单电子的电子学、单光子的光子学，微腔和光子晶体，稀磁半导体和自旋电子的相干输运等，这些研究将为研制在新原理基础上的新器件和实现量子计算、量子通信打下基础。     

Size effect on the mechanical behaviour of polycrystalline copper microbeams

To reduce costs and to remain competitive in the worldwide electronics industry, semiconductor manufacturers continually miniaturize devices. Today, the interconnect lines linking electronic components have diameters of the order of 100?nm or smaller. At the nanometre scale, strong size effects modify the mechanical properties of materials. To examine such effects, freestanding microbeams with geometrical and microstructural properties similar to those of interconnect lines have been designed. The yield stress dependence of the microbeams on their microstructure, shape and dimensions was investigated. As predicted by the Hall–Petch law, an increase in the yield stress with a decrease in the grain size was observed. In addition, a decrease in the cross-section of the microbeams at a fixed grain size led to a decrease in the yield stress. Hence, the yield domain of interconnect lines was observed to be controlled by two competitive size effects. This result imposes some restrictions on the design of electronic devices.     

SOI新结构——SOI研究的新方向

SOI（silicon-on-insulator：绝缘体上单晶硅薄膜）技术已取得了突破性的进展，但一般SOI结构是以SiO2作为绝缘埋层，以硅作为顶层的半导体材料，这样导致了一些不利的影响，限制了其应用范围。为解决这些问题和满足一些特殊器件／电路的要求，探索研究新的SOI结构成为SOI研究领域新的热点。如SOIM，GPSOI，GeSiOI，SionAlN，SiCOI，GeSiOI，SSOI等。文章将结合作者的部分工作，报道SOI新结构研究的新动向及其应用。     

Self-assembled and electrochemically deposited mono/multilayers for molecular electronics applications

For the development of molecular electronics, it is desirable to investigate characteristics of organic molecules with electronic device functionalities. In near future, such molecular devices could be integrated with silicon to prepare hybrid nanoelectronic devices. In this paper, we review work done in our laboratory on study of characteristics of some functional molecules. For these studies molecular mono and multilayers have been deposited on silicon surface by self-assembly and electrochemical deposition techniques. Both commercially available and specially designed and synthesized molecules have been utilized for these investigations. We demonstrate dielectric layers, memory, switching, rectifier and negative differential resistance devices based on molecular mono and multilayers.     

Low-Temperature Sputtered Ultralow-Loss Silicon Nitride for Hybrid Photonic Integration

Silicon-nitride-on-insulator (Si₃N₄) photonic circuits have seen tremendous advances in many applications, such as on-chip frequency combs, Lidar, telecommunications, and spectroscopy. So far, the best film quality has been achieved with low pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) and high-temperature annealing (1200°C). However, high processing temperatures pose challenges to the cointegration of Si₃N₄ with pre-processed silicon electronic and photonic devices, lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI), and Ge-on-Si photodiodes. This limits LPCVD as a front-end-of-line process. Here, ultralow-loss Si₃N₄ photonics based on room-temperature reactive sputtering is demonstrated. Propagation losses as low as 5.4 dB m⁻¹ after 400°C annealing and 3.5 dB m⁻¹ after 800°C annealing are achieved, enabling ring resonators with highest optical quality factors of > 10 million and an average quality factor of 7.5 million. To the best of the knowledge, these are the lowest propagation losses achieved with low temperature Si₃N₄. This ultralow loss enables the generation of microresonator soliton frequency combs with threshold powers of 1.1 mW. The introduced sputtering process offers full complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) compatibility with front-end silicon electronics and photonics. This could enable hybrid 3D integration of low loss waveguides with integrated lasers and lithium niobate on insulator.     

Organic materials in future integrated optoelectronic circuits

During the last two decades, lithium niobate has been extensively studied for applications in integrated optical circuits. However, it is difficult to integrate lithium niobate optical devices with semiconductor electronic devices because the materials are incompatible. In recent years, semiconductor materials have been emerging as the main contenders in applications; these materials have the advantage of allowing both optical and electronic devices to be integrated. Further, the semiconductor technology has advanced rapidly, allowing us to engineer device parameters very precisely. In semiconductor optoelectronic devices, that is, bulk and quantum well structures, electroabsorption has mainly been used for amplitude modulation of light. The electrorefraction effect is the most useful for devices employing phase-modulation techniques, but this effect cannot be effectively utilized in semiconductors since the strongest electrorefraction effect is near the absorption edge of the material. Recently, organic materials have been shown to have electro-optic coefficients equal to or larger than that of lithium niobate. There are major advantages of organic materials: (1) the organics can be deposited on semiconductor substrates, and therefore both electronic and optical circuits can be integrated; (2) in organic materials the electrorefraction can be effectively utilized to obtain both amplitude and phase modulation; (3) the organic material composition can be adjusted to satisfy some device requirements. In this paper, a comparison of these material systems are made in terms of device applications.     

Assessing the antimicrobial activity of zinc oxide thin films using disk diffusion and biofilm reactor

The electronic and chemical properties of semiconductor materials may be useful in preventing growth of microorganisms. In this article, in vitro methods for assessing microbial growth on semiconductor materials will be presented. The structural and biological properties of silicon wafers coated with zinc oxide thin films were evaluated using atomic force microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and MTT viability assay. The antimicrobial properties of zinc oxide thin films were established using disk diffusion and CDC Biofilm Reactor studies. Our results suggest that zinc oxide and other semiconductor materials may play a leading role in providing antimicrobial functionality to the next-generation medical devices.     

Electron spectroscopy of objects for nanoelectronics

An electron-spectroscopic analysis is made of layered nanostructures and clusters at the surface and in the bulk of a solid. A new method of forming metal/insulator/semiconductor (superconductor) nanostructures is proposed based on ion-stimulated metal segregation effects at the surface of low-temperature gallium arsenide and a 123 high-temperature superconductor. The geometric parameters and electronic structure of these nano-objects are studied. It is shown that their electronic properties can be controllably varied in situ by acting on the surface. The dimensional transformation of the electronic properties of metal clusters is studied for clusters in the insulator SiO₂, in the superconductor LTMBE-GaAs, and on silicon and graphite surfaces. The nature of this transformation is clarified. A diagnostics for cluster ensembles is developed by which one can determine the parameters needed to describe singleelectron transport: the average number of atoms per cluster, the average distance between clusters and isolated atoms, and the chemical state of the atoms. Ensembles of silver clusters with specified parameters are obtained on a silicon surface. It is shown that these ensembles are potentially useful for developing single-electron devices. Zh. Tekh. Fiz. 69, 85–89 (September 1999)     

Template-based synthesis of nanomaterials

The large interest in nanostructures results from their numerous potential applications in various areas such as materials and biomedical sciences, electronics, optics, magnetism, energy storage, and electrochemistry. Ultrasmall building blocks have been found to exhibit a broad range of enhanced mechanical, optical, magnetic, and electronic properties compared to coarser-grained matter of the same chemical composition. In this paper various template techniques suitable for nanotechnology applications with emphasis on characterization of created arrays of tailored nanomaterials have been reviewed. These methods involve the fabrication of the desired material within the pores or channels of a nanoporous template. Track-etch membranes, porous alumina, and other nanoporous structures have been characterized as templates. They have been used to prepare nanometer-sized fibrils, rods, and tubules of conductive polymers, metals, semiconductors, carbons, and other solid matter. Electrochemical and electroless depositions, chemical polymerization, sol-gel deposition, and chemical vapour deposition have been presented as major template synthetic strategies. In particular, the template-based synthesis of carbon nanotubes has been demonstrated as this is the most promising class of new carbon-based materials for electronic and optic nanodevices as well as reinforcement nanocomposites. Received: 27 May 1999 / Accepted: 27 October 1999 / Published online: 8 March 2000     

Plasma treatment studies of MIS devices

Silicon nitride films have emerged as the possible future dielectrics for ultra large scale integration (ULSI). Because the interface state density of silicon nitride/silicon interface in metal insulator semiconductor (MIS) configuration is more than an order of magnitude larger than that of silicon dioxide/silicon interface, plasma treatment studies on silicon nitride films have been undertaken for the possible improvement. Accordingly, silicon nitride films of various composition have been prepared by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) system using silane(SiH₄) and ammonia(NH₃) with nitrogen(N₂) as the diluent and MIS devices have been fabricated with as well as without plasma treated silicon nitride as the insulator. A considerable improvement in the silicon nitride/silicon interface is observed on ammonia plasma treatment while nitrous oxide(N₂O) plasma treatment studies have resulted in the establishment of a novel plasma oxidation process.     

Plasma-aided manufacturing

The present and potential applications of plasma-aided manufacturing are discussed and described. Plasma-aided manufacturing is used for producing new materials with unusual and superior properties, for developing new chemical compounds and processes, for machining, and for altering and refining materials and surfaces. Plasma-aided manufacturing has direct applications to semiconductor fabrication, materials synthesis, welding, lighting, polymers, anticorrosion coatings, machine tools, metallurgy, electrical and electronics devices, hazardous waste removal, high-performance ceramics, and many other items in both the high-technology and the more traditional industries in the United States     

Study of the optoelectronic and piezoelectric properties of ZrO2 doped PVDF from quantum chemistry calculations

In this study, we have evaluated the optoelectronic and piezoelectric properties of doped PVDF. The electronic structures and the linear and non-linear optical properties of ZrO2-doped PVDF were calculated by adopting the LDA approximations for the exchange-correlation potential in the DFT method integrated in Gaussian 09. Optoelectronic parameters and ground state molecular geometry were calculated using B3LYP functional and LanL2DZ as the basis. We chose the calculation with the B3LYP functional because it is a relatively inexpensive and it is precise method to predict molecular structures, energies and frequencies. In this work, some optical parameters and constants such as refractive index, electrical susceptibility, dipole moment, average polarizability and hyperpolarizability, phase velocity have been calculated. Dielectric constants, ionization potentials, electronic affinities, electronegativities, hardness and flexibility were also calculated. Finally, the piezoelectric properties such as the piezoelectric coefficient and the pyroelectric coefficient are evaluated. The calculated electronic structures show that virgin PVDF, hybrid molecules PVDF/2ZrO2 and PVDF/3ZrO2 have an E_gap less than 3 eV. On the other hand, the hybrid PVDF/ZrO2 molecule is a good dielectric and therefore a good piezoelectric nanocomposite because its E_gap is 5.89 eV greater than 3 eV. Finally, the results show that the hybrid molecules PVDF-2ZrO2 could have potential applications not only as piezoelectric materials but also as semiconductor components, nonlinear optical materials and possible building materials for molecular electronics and photonic devices.     

Electronic properties of SnTe-class topological crystalline insulator materials

The rise of topological insulators in recent years has broken new ground both in the conceptual cognition of condensed matter physics and the promising revolution of the electronic devices.It also stimulates the explorations of more topological states of matter.Topological crystalline insulator is a new topological phase,which combines the electronic topology and crystal symmetry together.In this article,we review the recent progress in the studies of SnTe-class topological crystalline insulator materials.Starting from the topological identifications in the aspects of the bulk topology,surface states calculations,and experimental observations,we present the electronic properties of topological crystalline insulators under various perturbations,including native defect,chemical doping,strain,and thickness-dependent confinement effects,and then discuss their unique quantum transport properties,such as valley-selective filtering and helicity-resolved functionalities for Dirac fermions.The rich properties and high tunability make SnTe-class materials promising candidates for novel quantum devices.     

宽禁带碳化硅单晶衬底及器件研究进展

碳化硅作为第三代宽禁带半导体的核心材料之一,相对于传统的硅和砷化镓等半导体材料,具有禁带宽度大、载流子饱和迁移速度高,热导率高、临界击穿、场强高等诸多优异的性质。基于这些优良的特性,碳化硅材料是制备高温电子器件、高频大功率器件的理想材料。近年来在碳化硅材料生长和器件制备方面取得重大进展,对碳化硅材料特性和生长方法进行回顾,并研究了碳化硅光导开关偏压、触发能量、导通电流之间的关系,以及开关失效情况下电极表面的损伤情况。