Make and Break Symmetry: New Semiconductor Devices Exploiting the Latest Developments in Condensed Matter Physics

• Post by: alejandro
• October 22, 2013
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Debdeep Jena

Department of Electrical Engineering

University of Notre Dame

Semiconductor devices are undergoing a quiet revolution, many years in the making. Extreme bandgap materials such as AlN, BN, and GaN add rich new physics such as Berry-phase induced electronic polarization, new methods of doping and conductivity control, modification of electron-phonon interactions by neutrons in isotopes of light atoms, mechanisms of internal voltage gain by the high degree of piezoelectricity in thin layers, and scalable tunneling paradigms. Combining these remarkable new physical properties in devices is unleashing new levels of performance in a technology that is already famously successful in the market of power and RF electronics, and photonics in the visible spectrum. But more importantly, the new physics is a springboard slated to create fundamentally new device paradigms in digital electronics, energy generation and savings, THz power generation, and deep-UV photonics. In a similar vein, the discovery of 2D crystal semiconductors such as graphene and chalcogenides has promised immense potential, but progress is held hostage by lack of control over material quality, and trying to fit the new materials to conventional device paradigms. Aspects of symmetry and geometry of such materials will be the key to new devices, a few of which will be presented. The talk will relate the new device physics to applications, and project what is coming.

Bio:

Debdeep Jena received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) in 2003. He joined the faculty at the University of Notre Dame the same year. His research and teaching interests are in the MBE growth and device applications of quantum semiconductor heterostructures, investigation of charge transport in nanostructured semiconducting materials such as graphene, nanowires and nanocrystals, and their device applications, and in the theory of charge, heat, and spin transport in nanomaterials. He is the author on various journal publications, including articles in Science, Nature Journals, Physical Review Letters, Electron Device Letters, Applied Physics Letters, and others. He has received two best student paper awards in 2000 and 2002 for his Ph.D. dissertation research, the NSF CAREER award in 2007, the Joyce award for excellence in undergraduate teaching in 2010, the ISCS Young Scientist award in 2012, and an IBM Faculty award in 2012.

Organized by: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Chile
When: Thursday, October 24th, 2013 at 12:00 PM
Where: Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Av. Beauchef 850, Santiago. Room: Electrotecnología, Electrical Engineering Building