NanoTechnology: Materials, Processes & Devices

Since the discovery of electricity, we are looking for promising methods to store that energy for use on demand. In the energy storage industry, electrochemical water splitting is a well-established technology to convert electricity into chemical energy, addressing the issues of effective storage and transport. On the other hand, electrochemical capacitors, namely supercapacitors, have also attracted much attention for electrical energy storage because of their feature of both high power density and energy density. In this work, we are developing processes for the synthesis of metal...

Amphiphilic graft copolymer self-assembly provides an effective method to create mesoporous structures that can act as templates for the synthesis of inorganic materials with controlled morphology. In this project, we are using PVC-g-POEM graft copolymer as a template for mesoporous SnO2 fabrication directly onto a microheater platform for gas sensing applications. The sol-gel solutions are composed of PVC-g-POEM and SnO2 precursor with tunable composition allowing the formation of various structures with controllable pore size, and surface area. The mesoporous SnO2 structure is...

III-V semiconducting materials have many characteristics such as high electron mobilities and direct band. gaps that make them desirable for many electronic applications including high performance transistors and solar cells. However, these materials generally have a high cost of production which significantly limits their use in many commercial applications. We aim to explore new growth methods which can grow high quality crystalline III-V films, using InP as an example substrate, onto non-epitaxial substrates. In addition to excellent crystal quality, critical considerations...

The application of strain to semiconductors allows for controlled modification of their band-structure. This principle is employed for the manufacturing of devices ranging from high- performance transistors to solid- state lasers. Traditionally, strain is typically achieved via growth on lattice-mismatched substrates. For two- dimensional (2D) semiconductors, this is not feasible as they typically do not interact epitaxially with the substrate. Here, we demonstrate controlled strain engineering of 2D semiconductors during synthesis by utilizing the thermal coefficient of expansion (...