EAGER: SUPER: Search for high-temperature superconductivity in heterostructured two-dimensional organic materials

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Nontechnical Abstract:The project sets the goal to design and fabricate single- and multi-layer organic materials which can host superconductivity, potentially at room temperature and ambient pressure. Obviously, this discovery would be a revolution across all technologies but in particular in microelectronics and energy transfer and generation. But even if this grand goal is not achieved, the development of the protocols for growth of multilayered organic materials with programmed functionality enables applications in semiconductor and renewable energy industries, optics and lasing. On the educational side, the project brings into the PI’s group an entirely new area of research linked to organic chemistry. Through group meetings and direct participation in the research, graduate and undergraduate students broaden their knowledge and expertise in organic and quantum chemistry, fields that are typically not part of physics education. The project supports training of undergraduate students in organic chemistry, semiconductor processing and transport, magnetic and optical measurements. It also creates opportunities for undergraduate research during summer, to be offered to the students from Department of Chemistry, thus exposing them to many aspects of physics lab. This engagement makes students ready for future collaborative multi-disciplinary work in industrial and academic environment.Technical Abstract: The research team uses the state-of-the-art method of organic molecular beam epitaxy (OMLE) to fabricate several series of organic heterostructured materials anticipated to have superconducting properties at high temperatures. OMLE allows to construct unique molecular intra-layer and inter-layer arrangements inaccessible by standard methods. They include self-assembled monolayers and multilayers made from aromatic molecules such as picene, chrysene, NTCDI, and anchored fullerenes in the configuration of field-effect transistor, which allows to inject carriers by adjusting the gate potential. Molecules with donor and acceptor properties are mixed to imitate molecular arrangements in charge-transfer organic superconductors. The physical properties of materials are characterized by transport and magnetic measurements in the range 1.5-300 K in the PI’s lab. The growth of the materials is monitored by in-situ spectroscopic ellipsometry. The charge states, electronic band formation, charge-transfer and optical properties are studied using University of Utah shared facilities: x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, optical absorption, and Raman spectroscopies.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.