Study of Semimetals and Narrow gap Semiconductors for Device Application

Background/Relevance

• Optoelectronic devices available for communication and sensing system use Ge, Si, GaAs, and InP and are:

  • Not available for low photon energies
  • Expensive
  • Not extremely fast in operational speed

Innovation

• Optoelectronics device from semimetals and narrow gap semiconductors will have:

    1- Broadband response down to far infrared spectral region

    2- Low cost and high precision.

    3- High operational speed and reduced size.

Approach

• Single crystals of layered quantum materials ( semimetals and narrow gap semiconductors) will be grown by Chemical Vapor Transport (CVT) and Flux methods
• Electronic, Magnetic, and Optical properties of the grown crystals will be studied.
• Device Fabrication by Photolithography and Characterization of device

Key Results

• Photoluminescence (PL) analysis of Ge-Sn Samples at different Sn Contents has been done.
• Raman Spectra analysis of UAF samples grown by CVD method has been done

Conclusions

This work supports theoretical and experimental understanding of the:

• Feasibility of using semimetals and narrow gap semiconductors in high-speed optoelectronics device applications.

Future Work

• Future work will be to search more interesting quantum materials and study their properties for  advanced devices.