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

人们对高质量、大面积、低成本半导体薄膜衬底的高可扩展制造技术的兴趣和需求日益增加，以满足电力电子、光电子和能量收集等一系列应用领域不断增长的市场，并具有高性能和规模经济的优势。例子包括提高处理大量电力的功率晶体管的整体成本性能的基板，取代白炽灯和荧光灯的发光二极管，以及价格合理但性能优异的太阳能电池。尽管几十年来在各个层面上取得了进展，但仍然缺乏一种满足此类基板广泛要求的通用制造技术。该项目将通过纳米制造方法控制材料的微结构，为未来衬底制造技术的部署铺平道路。这项研究涉及多个科学和工程学科，包括无机薄膜合成、半导体薄膜沉积和材料表征。这些学科将被整合到课程开发中，为本国机构和其他培养了大量少数民族和经济弱势学生的当地教育机构的本科生和研究生提供实践研究机会。在探索半导体薄膜异质外延的创新方法方面，开创性的研究不断涌现，这可能为未来不同半导体的异质集成提供一条实用的途径。从技术和科学的角度来看，在衬底和薄膜之间插入缓冲层的概念已经被确立为最吸引人的方法。然而，它依赖于单晶半导体衬底的可用性，其物理性质与要生长的薄膜没有太大的不同。本项目旨在展示使用单晶外延模板在非单晶任意衬底上生长单晶半导体薄膜的新概念。关键在于单晶外延模板，在其上提供了晶体注册表，用于半导体薄膜的后续生长，而不管底层非单晶任意衬底的性质如何。需要解决的两个关键问题是形成工程纳米表面结构，促进单晶外延模板的形成，以及随后在模板上生长半导体薄膜。它提供了一个获得动力学和热力学新知识的机会，控制单晶外延模板在工程纳米表面结构上的形成，以及模板上III-V族化合物半导体薄膜的生长机制。

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.