External quantum efficiency in solar cells based on junctions between PbSe quantum dots (QDs) and thin ZnO films is increased by replacing the ZnO films with a vertically oriented array of single-crystalline ZnO nanowires, and infiltrating this array with colloidal QDs. When illuminated with 100 mW/cm2 of simulated solar light, QD-nanowire solar cells exhibited power conversion efficiencies approaching 2%, approximately three times higher than that achieved with thin-film ZnO devices constructed with the same amount of QDs. Significant photocurrent and power conversion improvement with increasing nanowire length is consistent with higher exciton and charge collection efficiencies.
This Review highlights basic and transition metal conducting and semiconducting oxides. We discuss their material and electronic properties with an emphasis on the crystal, electronic, and band structures. The goal of this Review is to present a current compilation of material properties and to summarize possible uses and advantages in device applications. We discuss Ga2O3, Al2O3, In2O3, SnO2, ZnO, CdO, NiO, CuO, and Sc2O3. We outline the crystal structure of the oxides, and we present lattice parameters of the stable phases and a discussion of the metastable polymorphs. We highlight electrical properties such as bandgap energy, carrier mobility, effective carrier masses, dielectric constants, and electrical breakdown field. Based on literature availability, we review the temperature dependence of properties such as bandgap energy and carrier mobility among the oxides. Infrared and Raman modes are presented and discussed for each oxide providing insight into the phonon properties. The phonon properties also provide an explanation as to why some of the oxide parameters experience limitations due to phonon scattering such as carrier mobility. Thermal properties of interest include the coefficient of thermal expansion, Debye temperature, thermal diffusivity, specific heat, and thermal conductivity. Anisotropy is evident in the non-cubic oxides, and its impact on bandgap energy, carrier mobility, thermal conductivity, coefficient of thermal expansion, phonon modes, and carrier effective mass is discussed. Alloys, such as AlGaO, InGaO, (Al xIn yGa1− x− y)2O3, ZnGa2O4, ITO, and ScGaO, were included where relevant as they have the potential to allow for the improvement and alteration of certain properties. This Review provides a fundamental material perspective on the application space of semiconducting oxide-based devices in a variety of electronic and optoelectronic applications.
A high-throughput method for characterizing the temperature dependence of material properties following microsecond to millisecond thermal annealing, exploiting the temperature gradients created by a lateral gradient laser spike anneal (lgLSA), is presented. Laser scans generate spatial thermal gradients of up to 5 °C/μm with peak temperatures ranging from ambient to in excess of 1400 °C, limited only by laser power and materials thermal limits. Discrete spatial property measurements across the temperature gradient are then equivalent to independent measurements after varying temperature anneals. Accurate temperature calibrations, essential to quantitative analysis, are critical and methods for both peak temperature and spatial/temporal temperature profile characterization are presented. These include absolute temperature calibrations based on melting and thermal decomposition, and time-resolved profiles measured using platinum thermistors. A variety of spatially resolved measurement probes, ranging from point-like continuous profiling to large area sampling, are discussed. Examples from annealing of III-V semiconductors, CdSe quantum dots, low-κ dielectrics, and block copolymers are included to demonstrate the flexibility, high throughput, and precision of this technique.
Laser spike annealing was applied to PS-b-PDMS diblock copolymers to induce short-time (millisecond time scale), high-temperature (300 to 700 °C) microphase segregation and directed self-assembly of sub-10 nm features. Conditions were identified that enabled uniform microphase separation in the time frame of tens of milliseconds. Microphase ordering improved with increased temperature and annealing time, whereas phase separation contrast was lost for very short annealing times at high temperature. PMMA brush underlayers aided ordering under otherwise identical laser annealing conditions. Good long-range order for sub-10 nm cylinder morphology was achieved using graphoepitaxy coupled with a 20 ms dwell laser spike anneal above 440 °C.
Early stage phase segregation of block copolymers (BCPs) critically impacts the material’s final structural properties, and understanding the kinetics of these processes is essential to intentional design of systems for practical applications. Using sub-millisecond lateral gradient laser spike annealing and microbeam grazing incidence small-angle X-ray scattering, the ordering and disordering kinetics of cylinder forming poly(styrene-b-methyl methacrylate) (PS-b-PMMA) were determined for peak annealing temperatures up to 550 °C for dwells (anneal durations) ranging from 250 μs to 10 ms. These temperatures, far in excess of the normal thermal decomposition limit, are enabled by the short time scales of laser annealing. From initially microphase-segregated films, disordering was observed near the equilibrium order–disorder transition temperature (TODT) for dwell times above 10 ms but was kinetically delayed by diffusion for shorter time scales, resulting in suppression of observed disordering by over 70 °C. The onset of ordering from initially disordered films was also kinetically limited for short dwells. For anneals with peak temperatures well above TODT, the block copolymer fully disorders and quenches to a history-independent final state determined by the quench rate. This kinetic behavior can be represented on an effective Tg and TODT phase map as a function of the heating time scale. These results then potentially enable BCP processing to retain or intentionally modify the initial state while accelerating kinetics for other chemical or structural alignment processes
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