Design and growth of high entropy oxides with tailored ionic dynamics for memory and computing applications

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Nontechnical Description: New materials that offer tailored electronic as well as ionic characteristics can fundamentally impact how electronic devices and circuits are designed and built. This project brings together both experimentalists and theorists to explore a new class of oxide material that offers well-controlled coupled electronic/ionic effects for the development of new memory and logic devices. Through fundamental theory analysis and experimental innovations, materials that do not exist naturally can be systematically designed, synthesized and utilized. The techniques developed in this project offer new toolboxes for fundamental materials design and research, and enable new device applications. This project provides comprehensive educational and training opportunities for graduate students and undergraduates. The team plans to incorporate knowledge and techniques developed during research into core technical courses in materials science and electrical engineering disciplines, and disseminate research results to the general public through publications, summer camps, class visits and online exhibits. Technical Description: Previous studies on resistive switching memory devices are limited by oxide materials that are currently available. In this project, the team proposes to significantly broaden the parameter space of candidate materials that can lead to new material compositions and optimized device performance, by taking advantage of the concept that entropy can be used to stabilize new oxide phases. The multidiscipline team offers complementary expertise in theory, materials science, film growth and device engineering and aims to perform systematic study on high-entropy oxides and their applications in emerging electronic devices. The theoretical studies, including design of the high-entropy oxides with desired composition and stoichiometry, prediction of the kinetic (ionic hopping energy barrier and hopping distance) and thermodynamic (oxygen vacancy charge state) parameters, and transport and device-level modeling, provides guidance for the tightly integrated experimental studies including systematic materials synthesis, characterizations and device demonstrations and measurements to extract the relevant material parameters and verify the device performance. The synergistic co-development of these tasks not only enhances the likelihood of success of the proposed project, but also builds the foundation for other tasks where new, engineered materials can be developed.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.