A team of OSU researchers has won an NSF Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) award for the acquisition of a hybrid diamond/nitride synthesis cluster tool for studies of wide bandgap semiconductors.
The team of researchers spans two colleges and three departments including Physics (Prof. Ezekiel Johnston-Halperin, CME, PI on the proposal*; Prof. Fengyuan Yang, CME; Prof. Harris Kagan, HEPX), Electrical and Computer Engineering (Prof. Siddharth Rajan**; Prof. Steven A. Ringel) and Materials Science and Engineering (Prof. Roberto Myers**). This cluster tool will allow for in situ sample transfer of substrates between diamond and nitride growth chambers, giving it the unique capability to grow high quality wide-bandgap semiconducting heterostructures. Research activity will span from high-energy physics to prototype electronic, magnetic and photonic devices, covering 15 orders of magnitude in energy (from ~1 meV to ~ 1,000 TeV), 13 orders of magnitude in time (~ 100 fs to ~ 1 ms), and 11 orders of magnitude in length (from ~ 1 nm to ~ 10 cm).
The MRI instrument aqcuisition award will allow an interdisciplinary research team to impact many areas.
As shown in the diagram above, this activity will also support local, national, and international collaborations including the Center for Emergent Materials (CEM, an NSF funded MRSEC at OSU), the RD42 collaboration (located at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland), the State-funded Wright Center for Photovoltaic Innovation and Commercialization (PVIC), and the Center for Affordable Nanoengineering of Polymeric Biomedical Devices (CMPND, an NSF funded NSEC at OSU). The multi-disciplinary project was supported by and developed in conjunction with The Ohio State University Institute for Materials Research (IMR).
* For more information please contact Prof. Johnson-Halperin at ejh@mps.ohio-state.edu.
** Profs. Rajan and Myers have complementary 80/20 appointments between ECE/MSE and MSE/ECE, respectively.