Heterojunction | EPFL Graph Search

A heterojunction is an interface between two layers or regions of dissimilar semiconductors. These semiconducting materials have unequal band gaps as opposed to a homojunction. It is often advantageous to engineer the electronic energy bands in many solid-state device applications, including semiconductor lasers, solar cells and transistors. The combination of multiple heterojunctions together in a device is called a heterostructure, although the two terms are commonly used interchangeably. The requirement that each material be a semiconductor with unequal band gaps is somewhat loose, especially on small length scales, where electronic properties depend on spatial properties. A more modern definition of heterojunction is the interface between any two solid-state materials, including crystalline and amorphous structures of metallic, insulating, fast ion conductor and semiconducting materials. Manufacture and applications Heterojunction manufacturing generally requires the u

Dynamics of Electronic and Ionic Charges in Cyanine Organic Semiconductor Devices

Sandra Christina Jenatsch

Organic semiconductor materials have been widely applied in optoelectronic devices to replace their inorganic counterparts and explore new fields of applications. Due to their high extinction coefficients, chemical tunability and solubility, cyanine dyes are an interesting class of molecules to be employed in organic semiconductor devices. Their beneficial properties have been demonstrated in organic solar cells (OSC), photodetectors and recently in organic light-emitting electrochemical cells (OLEC). The focus of this thesis is to analyse different aspects regarding the dynamics of electronic and ionic charges in cyanine based devices. Models and conclusions are not restricted to cyanine based devices but can potentially be applied in various systems where combined ionic and electronic charges are present. In order to focus on electronic processes in OSCs, a combination of steady-state, transient and impedance analysis is used. It is resolved that trapped charges can be introduced at the dye/hole extracting layer interface by using specific solvents for the cyanine layer fabrication. These measurements also reveal the low hole mobility of cyanine films which in turn limits the possible upper layer thickness in OSCs. A frequently used way to enhance the conductivity of organic semiconductors is the addition of extra charges by chemical doping. This concept is employed for a near-infrared absorbing dye which is used as donor in a bilayer solar cell. The dependence of all figures of merit versus doping concentration and layer thickness is studied in detail. It is found that the performance of the optimised cell is not further improved by doping, but that it presents a good option if thicker layers are required, e.g. on rough substrates. Furthermore, the stability and degradation pathway of the p-doped species is analysed. This information is of general relevance as they also occur after charge transfer at the heterojunction interface of an OSC and during operation of OLECs. The dynamics of ionic charge carriers is separated into two contributions. In a first step, the steady-state diffusion profile of the counter ion within a cyanine/fullerene bilayer structure is scrutinised using different profiling techniques. An unexpected constant ion profile is found throughout the C60 layer. Simultaneously, the potential within the acceptor is measured by the Kelvin probe technique. A mechanism of combined electron and ion transfer from the C60 to the dye and vice versa is proposed which is in agreement with the experimental results. A prerequisite for OLEC operation is the mobility of ionic charge carriers. Their dynamics in cyanine salts under the effect of an external field is therefore studied in such devices. Several methods are developed and applied to characterise the dynamic p-i-n structure in detail, i.e. the position and width of the intrinsic region as well as the doping concentrations in p- and n-doped regions. The combination of all these methods helps to understand the transient behaviour of these cyanine devices but can also be adapted to other OLEC systems. A major drawback of cyanine dyes as emissive material is their low fluorescence quantum yield in solid films. To overcome this restriction and improve the OLEC efficiency, host-guest systems with various visibly emitting dyes are studied. The gain in fluorescence quantum yield in the film can directly be transferred to an increase in external quantum efficiency of the device.

EPFL2017

III-V Nanowire Hetero-junction Tunnel FETs integrated on Si

Davide Cutaia

In the last decade the power consumption of electronic devices has increased for both static and active components. Following the Dennard's scaling rule, as long as the transistor sizes are reduced then the supply voltage (VDD) can also be scaled in order to increase the area density and maintain or improve the performances. However, scaling VDD and thus shifting the threshold voltage (Vth) of 60mV in a metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) increases the OFF state current (Ioff ) by a factor of 10 in the ideal case. The reason for this is that the inverse subthreshold slope (SS) in an ideal MOSFET is limited by the thermionic emission of electrons over a potential barrier, which has an intrinsic physical limit of 60mV/decade. To overcome this limit, novel device concepts have been proposed and the tunnel field-effect transistor (TFET) is one of the most promising because it resembles a MOSFET and should enable to achieve sub-60mV/dec SS, low Ioff and small VDD. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the potential of TFETs by the fabrication and characterization of InAs/Si as p-channel and InAs/GaSb as n-channel device for a complementary TFET technology. III-V nanowires are grown via metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) and are integrated on Si(100) substrates using a novel technique called template-assisted selective epitaxy (TASE), which enables the fabrication of vertical and lateral III-V hetero-structure TFETs. Sub-40nm nanowire cross-section InAs/Si p-TFETs and InAs/GaSb n-TFETs in-plane on Si are demonstrated for the first time. The InAs/Si p-TFETs exhibit state-of-the art performances with an ON state current (Ion) of 4uA/um at VGS=VDS=-0.5V, ON/OFF ratio of 1x10E5 with SSavg of 70-80mV/dec at room temperature. The InAs/GaSb n-TFETs have an order of magnitude larger Ion but the SS is limited by the non-optimized gate-stack on InAs channel and by the depletion of the undoped GaSb source. Different operation regimes of TFETs are investigated by temperature-dependent measurements,Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) modeling and TCAD simulations, indicating that the switching region for InAs/Si is dominated by the presence of traps at the hetero-junction. The abruptness of the band-edges in InAs/GaSb is studied by the extraction of the conductance slope in fabricated p-n and p-i-n tunnel diodes.

EPFL2016

Charge transport in proximitized graphene within van der Waals heterostructures

Katharina Polyudov

Since their discovery, graphene and other 2D materials have become a subject of intense research in condensed matter physics. Especially the vast possibilities of combining those materials into heterostructures are promising for the discovery of novel physical phenomena. The heterostructures accessible through state-of-the-art techniques have suitably clean interfaces between the layers. Graphene has gained a lot of attention due to its remarkable mechanical stability and extremely high electron mobility. However, the zero bandgap of graphene is a major bottleneck for implementing this 2D material into most electronic applications. The ability to tune the properties of graphene by proximity effects has shifted the focus of graphene research towards the combination of graphene with other van der Waals materials. The main objective of the present thesis was to explore for two different types of graphene-based van der Waals heterostructure whether fingerprints of electronic proximity effects can be traced in their low temperature magnetotransport properties. The first part of the thesis deals with heterostructures of graphene and Bi2Te2Se (BTS). The strong spin-orbit coupling of BTS makes it a three-dimensional topological insulator with topological surface states which are protected by time-reversal symmetry. At the same time, BTS is promising to exert a pronounced spin-orbit proximity effect on graphene, and thereby to open a band gap and/or introduce a spin texture in the latter. The graphene/BTS heterostructures were fabricated by the direct growth of BTS on graphene to ensure a clean interface between both materials and correspondingly a good electronic coupling between them. Analysis of the weak localization effect observed in the magnetoconductivity revealed the presence of enhanced SOC in the proximitized graphene. The second part of the thesis focuses on heterostructures wherein graphene is combined with a-RuCl3 which has recently gained a lot of attention as a potential quantum spin liquid system. Previous studies on graphene/a-RuCl3 heterostructures found an unusual temperature evolution of the quantum oscillation amplitude, whose origin remained unclear. The magnetotransport data collected in this thesis point toward two possible origins for this behavior, namely spin fluctuations associated with the magnetic transition into an antiferromagnetic phase at the Néel temperature of approximately 7 K, and the hybridization-induced formation of heavy (flat) bands, both of which are likely to depend on the a-RuCl3 layer thickness. In addition, heterostructures comprising an a-RuCl3 monolayer were found to display a unusual gate dependence of the quantum oscillations, further corroborating the importance of the a-RuCl3 thickness.

EPFL2020