Building blocks of the future for photovoltaics

Research team observes formation of "dark" moiré interlayer excitons for the first time

19-Aug-2022 - An international research team led by the University of Göttingen has, for the first time, observed the build-up of a physical phenomenon that plays a role in the conversion of sunlight into electrical energy in 2D materials. The scientists succeeded in making quasiparticles – known as dark Moiré ...

The structure of the smallest semiconductor was elucidated

The smallest semiconductor composed of only 27 atoms, the Cd14Se13 cluster, has an interesting core-cage structure

05-Aug-2022 - A semiconductor is a material whose conductivity lies somewhere between that of a conductor and an insulator. This property allows semiconductors to serve as the base material for modern electronics and transistors. It is no understatement that the technological progress in the latter part of the ...

Surprising semiconductor properties revealed with innovative new method

Discovery reveals role of oxygen impurities in semiconductor properties

11-Mar-2022 - A research team probing the properties of a semiconductor combined with a novel thin oxide film have observed a surprising new source of conductivity from oxygen atoms trapped inside. Scott Chambers, a materials scientist at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, ...

An electronic rainbow – perovskite spectrometer by inkjet printing

04-Jan-2022 - Researchers from Innovation Lab HySPRINT at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) and Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (HU) have used an advanced inkjet printing technique to produce a large range of photodetector devices based on a hybrid perovskite semiconductor. By mixing of only three inks, the ...

A sharper look at the interior of semiconductors

A research team is developing a high-resolution imaging technique that can be used to determine internal structures in materials and their chemical composition in a non-destructive manner and with nanometre precision

19-Feb-2021 - Images provide information – what we can observe with our own eyes enables us to understand. Constantly expanding the field of perception into dimensions that are initially hidden from the naked eye, drives science forward. Today, increasingly powerful microscopes let us see into the cells and ...

X-rays show birth of semiconductor for blue LEDs

Gallium nitride is the second most important semiconductor material after silicon

28-Feb-2020 - Using a special pressure furnace, an international team of researchers has analysed the initial stages of the growth of the semiconductor gallium nitride with X-ray light. The observations show for the first time the atomic structure of the interface of the semiconductor material with liquid ...

An UV detector based on nanocrystals synthesized by using ion implantation

09-Aug-2018 - Scientists at the Lobachevsky University have been working for several years to develop solar-blind photodetectors operating in the UV spectral band. In the field of electronic technology, this is an important task, since such devices cut off emission with a wavelength higher than 280 nm, which ...

A faster and more efficient way to process information

15-May-2018 - University of Waterloo chemists have found a much faster and more efficient way to store and process information by expanding the limitations of how the flow of electricity can be used and managed. In a recently released study, the chemists discovered that light can induce magnetization in ...

Prediction of titanic nitride proved unsinkable

26-Jan-2018 - A team of experimental and computational scientists led by Carnegie's Tim Strobel and Venkata Bhadram have synthesized a long sought-after form of titanium nitride, Ti3N4, which has promising mechanical and optoelectronic properties. Standard titanium nitride (TiN), with a one-to-one ratio of ...

Extremely bright and fast light emission

12-Jan-2018 - An international team of researchers from ETH Zurich, IBM Research Zurich, Empa and four American research institutions have found the explanation for why a class of nanocrystals that has been intensively studied in recent years shines in such incredibly bright colours. The nanocrystals contain ...