News: Microelectronics
23 September 2022
US DoE grants $10.3m to establish first Energy Frontier Research Center in Arkansas
A team of researchers led by Shui-Qing ‘Fisher’ Yu, electrical engineering professor at the University of Arkansas (U of A), is to receive a $10.35m grant from the US Department of Energy (DoE) to establish the first Energy Frontier Research Center in Arkansas.
The Center for Manipulation of Atomic Ordering for Manufacturing Semiconductors will be dedicated to investigating the formation of atomic orders in semiconductor alloys and their effects on various physical properties. The research program aims to enable reliable, cost-effective and transformative manufacturing of semiconductors.
The four-year grant is part of the DoE’s $540m in research funding to universities and national laboratories focused on clean energy technologies. The ultimate goal is to create and develop low-carbon manufacturing processes that will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
The award is based on the multi-institutional team’s recent discovery that atoms in the semiconducting alloy silicon germanium tin (SiGeSn) demonstrate a short-range order in a periodic lattice (i.e. a regular and predictable arrangement of atoms over a short distance, usually only one or two atom spacings). This discovery had a significant effect on the energy bandgap and led to the hypothesis that material properties in semiconductor alloys could be designed and fabricated by manipulating the order of atoms.
“We particularly thank the institutional support from U of A, which played a critical role in proposal completion and will assist center operation,” Yu says.
Picture: From left: Greg Salamo, Hiro Nakamura, Shui-Qing ‘Fisher’ Yu, Hugh Churchill and Jin Hu, of the University of Arkansas.
In addition to Yu, the team comprises four colleagues in the Department of Physics — distinguished professor Greg Salamo, assistant professor Jin Hu, associate professor Hugh Churchill and assistant professor Hiro Nakamura — and several researchers at other institutions.
The U of A will lead researchers from Arizona State University, George Washington University, Stanford University, University of California Berkeley, Dartmouth College, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, University of Arkansas Pine Bluff, University of Delaware, and Sandia National Laboratory.
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