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

对于使得能够高度可扩展地制造用于制造半导体膜的高质量、大面积、低成本基板的技术存在越来越大的兴趣和强烈的需求，以满足在诸如电力电子、光电子和能量收集的一系列应用中的不断增长的市场，同时具有高性能和规模经济的益处。示例包括用于提高处理大量电功率的功率晶体管、取代白炽灯泡和荧光灯泡的发光二极管、以及可负担但具有优异性能的太阳能电池的总体成本性能的基板。尽管几十年来在各个层面上取得了进展，但仍然缺乏满足对这种基板的广泛要求的通用制造技术。该项目将通过利用具有通过纳米制造方法控制的微观结构的材料，为未来部署基板制造技术铺平道路。该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。这些学科将被纳入课程开发，为本地院校和其他培养大量少数民族和经济困难学生的本地教育机构的本科生和研究生提供实践研究机会。不断出现探索半导体薄膜异质外延创新方法的开创性示范，这可能为将来异质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，采用插入在基板和膜之间的缓冲层的概念已经被确立为最具吸引力的方法。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膜的物理性质没有很大的不同。本项目旨在展示一种新的观点，即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。关键在于单晶外延模板，在该单晶外延模板上提供晶体学登记，用于半导体膜的后续生长，而不管下面的非单晶任意衬底的性质如何。要解决的两个关键问题是形成工程化纳米表面结构，其促进单晶外延模板的形成和随后在模板上半导体膜的生长，其提供了获得控制在工程纳米表面结构上形成单晶外延模板的动力学和热力学以及III族-V化合物半导体薄膜。

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.