Sustainable alternatives for high-performance and functional materials based on renewable resources are intensely needed as future alternatives for present-day, fossil-based materials. Nanochitin represents an emerging class of highly crystalline bionanoparticles with high intrinsic mechanical properties and the ability for conjugation into functional materials owing to reactive amine and hydroxyl groups. Herein we demonstrate that hydrogels containing surface-deacetylated chitin nanofibrils of micrometer length and average diameters of 9 nm, as imaged by cryogenic transmission electron microscopy, can be wet-spun into macrofibers via extrusion in a coagulation bath, a simple low energy and large-scale processing route. The resulting biofibers display attractive mechanical properties with a large plastic region of about 12% in strain, in which frictional sliding of nanofibrils allows dissipation of fracture energy and enables a high work-of-fracture of near 10 MJ/m3. We further show how to add functionality to these macrofibers by exploiting the amine functions of the surface chitosan groups to host catalytically active noble metal nanoparticles, furnishing biobased, renewable catalytic hybrids. These inorganic/organic macrofibers can be used repeatedly for fast catalytic reductions of model compounds without loss of activity, rendering the concept of hybridized chitin materials interesting as novel bioderived supports for nanoparticle catalysts.

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In this paper, we describe the use of 50 nm atomic layer deposited (ALD) Al2O3 to suppress the interfacial reaction and inter-diffusion between the gate metal and semiconductor interface, to extend the operation limit up to 600 °C in air. Suppression of diffusion is verified through Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) depth profiling and X-ray diffraction (XRD) and is further supported with electrical characterization. An ALD Al2O3 thin film (10 nm and 50 nm), which functions as a dielectric layer, was inserted between the gate metal (Ni/Au) and heterostructure-based semiconductor material (AlGaN/GaN) to form a metal-insulator-semiconductor high electron mobility transistor (MIS-HEMT). This extended the 50 nm ALD Al2O3 MIS-HEMT (50-MIS) current-voltage (Ids-Vds) and gate leakage (Ig,leakage) characteristics up to 600 °C. Both, the 10 nm ALD Al2O3 MIS-HEMT (10-MIS) and HEMT, failed above 350 °C, as evidenced by a sudden increase of approximately 50 times and 5.3 × 106 times in Ig,leakage, respectively. AES on the HEMT revealed the formation of a Ni-Au alloy and Ni present in the active region. Additionally, XRD showed existence of metal gallides in the HEMT. The 50-MIS enables the operation of AlGaN/GaN based electronics in oxidizing high-temperature environments, by suppressing interfacial reaction and inter-diffusion of the gate metal with the semiconductor.

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A process for growing gallium nitride (GaN) vertical p-i-n homojunctions on (111) silicon (Si) substrates using metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) was developed, and a triple mesa etch technique was used to fabricate efficient betavoltaic energy converters. Monte Carlo simulation platform CASINO was used to model beta radiation penetration into GaN to aid device design. The resulting devices were tested under irradiation from a scanning electron microscope (SEM) electron beam (e-beam) tuned to imitate the energies of the 63 Ni beta emission spectrum. Based on current-voltage (I-V) measurements taken under e-beam illumination, a maximum open-circuit voltage of 412 mV and a maximum short-circuit current density of 407 nA/cm 2 were measured. A high fill factor (FF) of 0.77 and power conversion efficiency of 6.6% were obtained. Additionally, the proposed triple mesa etch technique used to create these betavoltaics has potential for further use in fabricating many types of electronic devices using a wide variety of material platforms.