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

材料的发现、开发和改性一直是我们生活的世界发展的关键因素。对具有电学或光学性质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接近其技术可行性的极限。这方面的一个例子是在硅（Si）基微电子学中取得的进步，其导致与处理功率相关的速度变得至关重要，其中减小了用于实现这一点的微电子学的尺寸。随着尺寸的减小，这种方法最终受到限制;因此必须寻求替代方法。众所周知，光通信和数据传输速度快得多，因为信息可以以光速移动。然而，每当它与电子器件相互作用时，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，有强烈的愿望和令人信服的理由来开发一种“光电”技术，该技术是光学和电子系统的混合，但没有由两种当前技术独立工作所施加的当前限制。该提案将寻求将最发达的材料改性工具之一应用于现代微电子学的基础，离子注入，一类材料显示出独特的潜力，使未来的光电子技术。这些被称为硫属化物的材料已经广泛应用于诸如光电器件（太阳能电池）、存储器（例如DVD）和先进光学器件（例如激光器）的应用中。然而，目前它们仅用作电子材料或光学材料，每种材料使用不同类型的硫属化物。它们允许在这些单独的应用类型中使用的特性使它们具有开发的潜力，使得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。这一点尚未完成的原因之一是，已经证明在通常涉及高温熔化的材料制备期间改变其电子性质是极其困难的。添加到材料中的任何东西，称为掺杂，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所需的效果。在这项工作计划中，我们将通过在低于其熔融温度的硫属化物材料中引入掺杂剂来修改性能，从而不允许材料重新排序。这将使用离子注入进行，从而可以精确控制引入的杂质类型。作为这项工作的结果，我们将首次了解如何以可控的方式修改这些独特的材料。然后，我们将利用这一点来开发更好的材料电子和光学性质起源模型，这将使我们能够开发优化的材料。我们还将开发原型设备，这将引领真正的光电技术的发展。该计划将建立英国在这一领域的领导者，因此直接有助于知识经济的持续增长。我们将用最先进的技术培训下一代科学家和工程师，以确保英国保持这方面所需的专业知识基础，旨在确保这项工作的影响最大化并在可能的情况下加速，并将结果广泛传播，包括向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.