Basic Understanding of Oxide Physics
Research into the basic physics behind the oxides’ electronic properties is the basis of what we do at the Oxide Electronics Lab. The motivation is twofold: we’re interested in advancing the physical understanding and the mechanisms governing the exotic behavior of some oxides – and then leverage this understanding in the development and engineering of these materials for new devices. Our experimental capabilities in oxide growth and characterization allow us to develop new families of oxides, and perform picometer-scale engineering of their structure and properties.
Oxide Integration with Semiconductors
The integration of oxides with semiconductors requires the full scale of our growth capabilities. This topic constitutes a critical bridge between having an oxide with useful properties, and designing functional devices.
The example above is taken from a paper demonstrating how an epitaxially integrating an oxide (SrTiO3) with a semiconductor (GaAs) offers exciting opportunities in solar fuel production; the oxide allows harnessing the energy obtained from a semiconducting solar cell towards breaking water molecules into clean hydrogen fuel.
Oxide-based Devices
Here we’re interested in leveraging all the above towards design, simulation, fabrication and characterization of new electronic devices. The idea is to bring together tunable and exotic electronic properties of the oxides, combine them with what standard semiconductors can do, and create new logic, sensing, optoelectronic devices, among others.