A team of engineers and scientists led by the University of Minnesota Twin Cities developed a new approach to smart material creation. More specifically, they devised a new way to make thin perovskite oxide semiconductor films. According to Phys, these are specific "smart" material classes with unique properties that may alter as a response to certain stimuli, including magnetic fields, electric fields, and light.
Limitations of Epitaxy
The study was published in ScienceAdvances.
Phys notes that such a discovery will enable specialists to harness and mix such properties with emerging nano-scale materials. This could help create upgraded devices, including smart textiles, flexible electronics, and sensors.
Being able to produce materials in the form of a thin film makes it easier to integrate into tinier components of electronic devices. Several thin films are created through a method known as epitaxy, which involves adding material atoms on a specific substrate to come up with a thin material sheet, with one layer at a time.
However, most of these films made through epitaxy get stuck on the hosting substrate. This, thus, limits their functionality. If the film detaches from the substrate and becomes an independent membrane, it becomes more useful.
New Approach to Smart Material Creation
The research team has discovered a way to develop a particular metal oxide, strontium titanate, membrane. Their approach dodges issues that have taunted freestanding metal oxide film synthesis previously.
The authors expressed how they came up with a process that enables the creation of a freestanding membrane for almost any oxide material. The process also involves exfoliation and transferring to any particular subject of interest. They also note how they can now reap the functionality benefits of such materials by mixing them with other nanomaterials. This would enable a vast range of highly efficient and functional devices.
Science Daily reports how creating freestanding membranes for such materials is difficult because of the 3D bonding of atoms, in contrast to 2D material. While there is a process known as remote epitaxy that can create such a freestanding membrane, one of the biggest limitations that comes with it is that the oxygen within the material ends up oxidizing the graphene. This, thus, ruins the sample.
With hybrid molecular beam epitaxy, however, the team was able to circumvent this issue through the use of titanium that had already bonded with oxygen. The lab of study author Bharat Jalan pioneered this method. Such a method enables the automatic control of the composition.
Jalan notes how they revealed, for the first time, a method that enables the creation of complex oxide while ensuring that the graphene does not get oxidized. He notes how this is a huge milestone in synthesis science.
Professor Steven Koester, a senior study author and director of the Minnesota Nano Center, expressed how such complex oxides are a vast material class filled with vital functions within them. Now, specialists can think about using them to create tiny transistors for electronic devices. They can also be applied in other applications, such as smart textiles, non-volatile memories, and flexible sensors.
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