Semiconductor Crystals Tweaked to Realize Superior Properties for Electronics

upstart writes:

open-access-doi-10.1038/s41524-021-00538-0

Semiconductor Crystals Tweaked to Realize Superior Properties for Electronics:

Scientists from Skoltech, together with their collaborators in the United States and Singapore, have developed a neural network that enables the tweaking of semiconductor crystals in a controlled way to achieve excellent properties for electronics.

This facilitates a new way of developing next-generation solar cells and chips by leveraging a controllable deformation that could potentially alter the properties of a material on the go. The study was published in the npj Computational Materials journal.

At the nanoscale level, materials are capable of resisting major deformation. In the so-called strained state, they show significant electronic, thermal, optical and other characteristics as a result of variations in the interatomic distances. The inherent properties of a strained material may vary, with the semiconducting silicon, for example, changing into a material that freely conducts the electric current.

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