Graphene Coated Porous Semiconductor Nanocomposites for High Performance Electronics and Photonics

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Nanostructured semiconductor materials have had a major effect on our daily lives by enabling powerful technologies like lasers, solid-state lighting, powerful and fast electronics, photonics and high performance solar cells. More recently semiconductors were modified through electrochemical processing to make the monocrystal porous and to give it new properties. Porous silicon has attracted a lot of interest for its range of properties, from visible light emission, high specific surface area, reduced mechanical stiffness, or adjustable lattice constant through oxidation. Graphene on the other hand, is a material with properties that can potentially generate highly disruptive new technologies, in sensing, energy storage, electronics and photovoltaics to name a few. In the recent years, my team has laid the foundation for the synthesis of a specific kind of nanostructured material: nano- and meso-porous semiconductors. Their nanometer-scale internal structures can also display quantum confinement effects. The proposed 5-year research program will use the porous semiconductor structure to incorporate graphene and coat its internal surface area to form a new kind of nano-composite, called « graphene-coated porous semiconductor » nano-composite. The high internal surface area of the porous semiconductor will allow the integration of large quantities of graphene with the corresponding benefits. However, much remains to be understood, on the synthesis process as much as on the material properties that it creates.***My program will operate around two main streams. The first stream will focus on the synthesis process and nano composite properties that it produces. The incorporation process must be understood and optimized to generate a form of graphene as close as possible to the « pristine » state to gain full benefits. I will explore the range of properties that can be achieved by varying the underlying porous matrix structure (porosity, crystallite size). Mechanical, thermal and transport properties, along with photo refractive properties will be studied. The second stream will use these results to explore possible applications where the new nano composites can be exploited. The nano composite will be used as interlayers for the high quality epitaxial growth of GaN on silicon wafers. The effect of the graphene on the temperature stability of the nano-composite, a necessary condition for success will also be studied.**