AMORPHOUS CHALCOGENIDE-BASED OPTOELECTRONIC PLATFORM FOR NEXT-GENERATION OPTOELECTRONIC TECHNOLOGIES

材料的发现、开发和改造一直是我们生活的世界发展的关键因素。对具有电学或光学特性的材料的研究在实现所有现代技术，特别是电子、计算和通信方面发挥了重要作用。随着这些技术的发展，现有的材料也被修改，并被推向技术可行的极限。这方面的一个例子是基于硅（Si）的微电子技术的进步，它导致了与处理能力相关的速度变得至关重要，而用于实现这一目标的微电子技术的尺寸却缩小了。随着尺寸减小，这种方法最终会受到限制；因此，必须寻求其他方法。众所周知，光通信和数据传输的速度要快得多，因为信息可以以光速传输。然而，每当它与电子设备相互作用时，例如当宽带光纤连接到计算机时，数据传输和处理必须减慢到微电子处理器的速度。因此，有一种强烈的愿望和令人信服的论据来开发一种“光电”技术，这种技术是光学和电子系统的混合，但没有目前两种当前技术独立工作所施加的限制。该提案将寻求将最发达的材料修饰工具之一应用于现代微电子学，离子注入，一类具有独特潜力的材料，以实现未来的光电技术。这些被称为硫族化合物的材料已经广泛应用于光伏（太阳能电池）、存储器（例如dvd）和先进的光学设备（例如激光器）等应用中。然而，目前它们仅被用作电子材料或光学材料，每种材料使用不同类型的硫族化合物。它们的特性允许在这些单独的应用类型中使用，这使得它们有潜力被开发，以便一种材料的优异光学特性可以与另一种材料的优异电子特性相结合，反之亦然。其中一个尚未完成的原因是，在材料制备过程中，通常需要在高温下熔化，要修改它们的电子特性是极其困难的。任何添加到材料中的物质，即掺杂，在这些条件下都是无效的，因为材料在熔化时能够重新排序以抵消预期的效果。在这项工作中，我们将通过在硫系材料中引入低于其熔体温度的掺杂剂来改变其性质，从而使材料无法重新排序。这将使用离子注入进行，可以精确控制引入的杂质类型。由于这项工作，我们将首次了解如何以受控的方式修改这些独特的材料。然后，我们将利用它来开发更好的材料电子和光学特性起源模型，这将使我们能够开发出优化的材料。我们还将开发原型设备，引领真正光电技术的发展。该计划将确立英国在这一领域的领导地位，从而直接促进知识经济的持续增长。我们将以最先进的技术培训下一代科学家和工程师，以确保英国保持所需的专业知识基础，旨在确保这项工作的影响在可能的情况下最大化和加速，并广泛沟通结果，包括与这项研究的所有利益相关者。

Materials discovery, development and modification has been a key factor in developing the world we live in. The study of materials which exhibit electrical or optical properties has played a major role in enabling all of modern technology and in particular electronics, computing and communications. As these technologies have been developed existing materials have also been modified and pushed close to their limits of what is technical feasible. An example of this is the advances made in silicon (Si) based microelectronics which has led to speed, which relates to power of processing, becoming critical, with a reduction in the size of the microelectronics used to achieve this. This approach is ultimately limited as sizes reduce; thus alternative methods must be sought. Optical communication and data transfer is widely known as being much quicker as information can be moved at the speed of light. However, whenever it interacts with electronics, such as when broadband optical fibre is connected to a computer the data transfer and processing must slow down to the speed of the microelectronic processors. There is a strong desire and compelling argument therefore to develop an 'optoelectronic' technology which is a hybrid of the optical and electronic systems but without the current limitations imposed by the two current technologies working independently. This proposal will seek to apply one of the most developed materials modification tools that is fundamental to modern microelectronics, ion-implantation, to a class of materials that show unique potential for enabling future optoelectronic technologies. These materials, known as chalcogenides, are already widely used in applications such as photovoltaics (solar cells), memory (e.g. DVDs), and advanced optical devices (e.g. lasers). Currently however they are used solely as either electronic materials or optical materials, with different types of chalcogenides used for each. Their properties that allow use in these separate application types gives them the potential to be developed so that the excellent optical properties of one material can be combined with the excellent electronic properties of another and vice versa. One of the reasons that this has yet to be done is that it has proved to be extremely difficult to modify their electronic properties during the material preparation which typically involves melting at high temperatures. Anything that is added to the materials, referred to as doping, is ineffective under these conditions due to the ability of the material to reorder itself whilst melted to cancel out the desired effect. In this programme of work, we will modify the properties by introducing dopants into the chalcogenide materials below their melt temperature, thus not allowing the material to reorder. This will be undertaken using ion-implantation which allows precise control of the type of impurity introduced. As a result of this work, we will develop for the first time an understanding of how these unique materials can be modified in a controlled way. We will then use this to develop better models of the origin of the materials' electronic and optical properties which will allow us to develop optimised materials. We will also develop prototype devices that will lead the way to the development of a truly optoelectronic technology. This programme will establish the UK as leaders in this field and therefore directly contribute to the continuing growth of the knowledge economy. We will train the next generation of scientists and engineers in state-of-the-art techniques to ensure that the UK maintains the expertise base required for this, aim to ensure the impact of this work is maximised and accelerated where possible, and communicate the results widely including to all stakeholders in this research.