Nanolaminates:
Synthetic high performance materials
Nanolaminates:
Synthetic high performance materials
With modern materials already pushed to their inherent physical limits, new breakthroughs and novel material designs are required to meet the ever-increasing demand for high performance electronic devices at low cost. In the SFI funded project “Lasima” we aim to develop a radical new way of synthesising customised, low cost, yet high performance materials by combining materials into novel nanolaminates which combine and enhance their functionality. In our approach thin films of customised material will be synthesised by assembly of alternating layers, each only a few nm thick. While widely applicable, Lasima’s nanolamination technique will be demonstrated on fields of Transparent Conducting Oxides and spin manipulating materials of interest in spintronics
The research is jointly done between researchers in Trinity College (Prof. Shvets) and Dublin City University (Dr. Fleischer) and the initial emphasis of the research will be on the chemical and physical synthesis of novel nanolaminated transparent conducting oxides. These types of materials are used in displays, solar cells, gas sensors, and many other applications. One of the main aims is to lower the cost and increase the performance of the materials, while at the same time only using earth abundant elements.
Our aim is to expand the lamination concept also to magnetic and spintronic materials to bring these ideas also to novel device concepts in the field of spintronics and quantuum computing.
Our project is in the very early stages. We'll keep you posted on results and developments. For now we have some impressions of early proof of concept samples as well as a peak into our labs:
These
are some electron microscope images of test samples from previous research projects which
stimulated the ideas for Lasima
For more details see:
D. Caffrey et.al. Phys. Rev. Materials 2, 096002, (2018)
O. Mauit et.al. Phys. Rev. B 95, 125128, (2017)
XRD and XRR are employed to confirm which materials we have grown, examine the crystalline quality and thickness of materials and to examine the crystalline quality and interface roughness of multilayers. The image shows one of the system available in TCD
In order to confirm how materials grow and in what composition we employ XPS to measure the stoichiometry of layers just a few nanometre thick. The image shows the system in DCU
Sputtering is one of the growth methods used to grow oxides and multilayers. Sputtering can result in good quality crystalline oxides. The photo shows the system in TCD.
Another method we will use to make the nanolaminates is atomic layer deposition. The photo shows the system in the Nano Research Facility in DCU
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| Prof. Dr. Igor V.
Shvets Dr. Brian Walls |
Dr. Karsten Fleischer | We gratefully acknowledge funding by Science Foundation Ireland under grant No: 22/FFP-A/10353 |
