Progress in Crystal Growth and Characterization of Materials最新文献

In the great adventure of two-dimensional (2D) materials, the characterization techniques are the lighthouse to guide the investigators across heavy mist and submerged reef. In this review, we highlight the recent achievements in the characterization of the 2D materials. Firstly, the methods to identify the fundamental properties of the 2D materials are introduced. Then, the specific characterization techniques for analyzing electric, optical and chemical properties are summarized with regards to their corresponding fields of applications. It should also be noted that a big challenge remains in the characterizations of the 2D materials in the hybrid or composite and wide acceptance of the characterization standards need to be established to further promote the industrialization of 2D materials in the near future.

The synthesis of crystals through biomineralization is a process of protection and support preserved in animals, protists, moneras, plants and fungi. The genome of every species has evolved to preserve and/or modify the formation of one or another type of crystal, which may be of the organic or inorganic type. The most common inorganic crystals identified in organisms include calcium carbonate (CaCO₃), calcium phosphate (CaP), calcium oxalate (CaOx), magnetite or greigite, and sulfides of cadmium (CdS), mercury (HgS) and lead (PbS). Organic crystals are of the protein or ice type. The formation of both types of crystals requires biomolecules such as proteins. This paper reviews the proteins involved in the synthesis of different crystals in distinct biological systems, in order to understand how each organism has adapted its genome to preserve essential mechanisms such as biomineralization, which has enabled them to survive in a changing environment for millions of years.

Lately, germanium based materials attract a lot of interest as they can overcome some limits inherent to standard Silicon Photonics devices and can be used notably in Mid-Infra-Red sensing applications. The quality of epitaxially grown intrinsic and doped materials is critical to reach the targeted performances. One of the main challenges in the field remains the fabrication of efficient group-IV laser sources compatible with the microelectronics industry, seen as an alternative to the complexity of integration of III-V lasers on Si. The difficulties come from the fact that the group-IV semiconductor bandgap has to be transformed from indirect to direct, using high tensile strains or by alloying germanium with tin. Here, we review recent progresses on critical germanium-based photonic components such as waveguides, photodiodes and modulators and discuss the latest advances towards germanium-based lasers. We show that novel optical germanium-On-Insulator (GeOI) substrates fabricated by the Smart Cut™ technology is a key feature for future Si - Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) - compatible laser demonstration. This review hints at a future photonics platform based on germanium and Silicon.

Knowledge of the location and concentration of impurity atoms doped into a synthesized material is of great interest to investigate the effect of doping. This would usually be investigated using X-ray or neutron diffraction methods in combination with Rietveld analysis. However, this technique requires a large-scale facility such as a synchrotron radiation source and nuclear reactor, and can sometimes fail to produce the desired results, depending on the constituent elements and the crystallographic conditions that are being analysed. Thus, it would be preferable to use an element-selective spectroscopy technique that is applicable to any combination of elements. We have established a quantitative method to deduce the occupation sites and their occupancies, as well as the site-dependent chemical states of the doped elements, using a combination of transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy, and electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS). The method is based on electron channelling phenomena where the symmetries of the Bloch waves excited in a crystal are dependent on the diffraction condition or incident beam direction with respect to the crystal axes. By rocking the incident electron beam with a fixed pivot point on the sample surface, a set of EDX/EELS spectra are obtained as a function of the beam direction. This is followed by a statistical treatment to extract the atom-site-dependent spectra, thereby quantitatively enabling the estimation of the site occupancies and chemical states of the dopants. This is an extension of the ‘ALCHEMI’ (Atom Location by Channelling Enhanced Microanalysis) method or ‘HARECXS/HARECES’ (High Angular Resolution Channelled X-ray/Electron Spectroscopy), and we further extended the method to be applicable to cases where the crystal of interest contains multiple inequivalent atomic sites for a particular element, applying the precise spectral predictions based on electron elastic/inelastic dynamical scattering theory. After introduction of conceptual aspects of the method, we describe the extension of the method together with the development of the theoretical calculation method. We then demonstrate several useful applications of the method, including luminescent, ferrite, and battery materials. We discuss the advantages and drawbacks of the present method, compared with those of the recently developed atomic column-by-column analysis using aberration-corrected scanning TEM and high-efficiency X-ray detectors.

In this paper the results of structural analysis of the SnO₂ and In₂O₃ films deposited by spray pyrolysis are presented. The main goals of this analysis are summarizing the results obtained in this field, highlighting a correlation between parameters of film deposition and the material structure and formulating some general regularities, typical for metal oxides. Peculiarities and mechanisms of pyrosol deposition as well as advantages and disadvantages of this technology for deposition of the films with required parameters were also discussed. It is shown that this technology has great potential for controlling structural parameters of metal oxides such as thickness, the grain size, texturing, roughness, the grain faceting and the porosity.

The goal of this article is to provide an overview of the state of knowledge regarding the Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) of metal oxides on III–V semiconductor surfaces. An introduction to ALD, the band structure, various defects present on the III–V surface and how they relate to Fermi level pinning are discussed. Surface passivation approaches are examined in detail in conjunction with experimental and computational results. The “interface clean-up” reaction that leads to the formation of a sharp gate oxide/semiconductor interface is related to the surface chemistry and the transport of the surface oxides through the growing dielectric film. Finally, the deposition of metal oxides on semiconductors is discussed in the context of interface quality and some examples of devices using III–V channels and ALD metal oxides are given.

A description is given of the traveling solvent technique, which has been used for the crystal growth of both congruently and incongruently melting materials of many classes of intermetallic, chalcogenide, semiconductor and oxide materials. The use of a solvent, growth at lower temperatures and the zoning process, that are inherent ingredients of the method, can help to grow large, high structural quality, high purity crystals. In order to optimize this process, careful control of the various growth variables is imperative; however, this can be difficult to achieve due to the large number of independent experimental parameters that can be grouped under the broad headings ‘growth conditions’, ‘characteristics of the material being grown’, and ‘experimental configuration, setup and design’. This review attempts to describe the principles behind the traveling solvent technique and the various experimental variables. Guidelines are detailed to provide the information necessary to allow closer control of the crystal growth process through a systematic approach. Comparison is made between the traveling solvent technique and other crystal growth methods, in particular the more conventional stationary flux method. The use of optical heating is described in detail and successful traveling solvent growth by optical heating is reported for the first time for crystals of Tl₅Te₃, Cd₃As₂, and FeSc₂S₄ (using Te, Cd and FeS fluxes, respectively).

Two-dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) have received significant attention recently due to their unique properties such as a transition from indirect to direct band gap when thinned down to a monolayer and also valley-dependent photoluminescence. In addition, being a semiconductor with considerable mobility, it has been touted as a candidate in next generation electronics. However, a major hurdle to its implementation is the difficulty in producing large areas of these 2D TMDCs with well-defined thicknesses. In this review, we will first introduce the basic properties as well as the various synthesis methods of 2D TMDCs. Focus will be placed on recent advances in chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth as they currently yield the largest areas. Obstacles present in CVD growth will be presented and existing solutions to them will be discussed in tandem with current characterization methods for evaluation of crystal quality. Through our presentation on the latest approaches to issues in CVD growth, we hope to present the readers a perspective on recent developments as well as providing an outlook on the future of CVD growth of TMDCs.