MRI: Acquisition of a III-V Molecular Beam Epitaxy System for a new Materials Growth User Facility

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The growth of high quality thin films of semiconductor materials is critical to research ranging from fundamental physics to the understanding of electronic devices including transistors, lasers, photodetectors, and advanced solar cells. With this award from the Major Research Instrumentation program, the University of Delaware will acquire a molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) system to permit the growth of high-quality materials for these and other applications. This system will serve as the centerpiece of a user facility to allow researchers from around the country to grow materials to support their research programs in physics, electrical engineering, materials science and engineering, chemistry, and other fields, providing a regional and national impact to this acquisition. This award from the Major Research Instrumentation program supports the acquisition of a molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) system for the growth of III-V semiconductors. This system will have several unique characteristics: it will contain an atomic hydrogen source for low-temperature substrate cleaning, bismuth and rare-earth effusion cells, a high-flux silicon cell, and a band-edge thermometry system to permit reliable temperature measurement at low growth temperatures. It will also be connected under vacuum to an existing topological insulator MBE system. This setup will enable the growth of a variety of new materials and heterostructures that are currently unavailable to users within and outside of the University of Delaware. This system will form the backbone of a new user facility focused on materials growth within the context of a larger Institute for Nanoscale Innovation, which contains several other synergistic user facilities.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.