Exploratory materials research focuses on early stage development of oxide materials, on their fundamentals, and on their screening for novel applications. This cluster intentionally overlaps with the clusters on Growth and on Physical properties, highlighting their fundamental research aspects.
Following our work in the first phase, we target alloys that extend the compositional range of (In,Ga)2O3 and (Al,Ga)2O3 in order to provide Ga2O3-based heterostructures with large band-offsets. Moreover, we will investigate novel aspects, such as different deep acceptors and semiconducting p-type oxides (based on our results on p-type SnO and NiO), for insulation layers or heterojunctions in Ga2O3-based power devices.
Another focus lies on novel ultra-wide band gap semiconducting oxides, such as ZnGa2O4.
GraFOx partners bring in a wide and comprehensive range of growth techniques. For rapid synthesis of solid solutions, compositional spread PLD is used as a high throughput method. Once promising ranges of materials have been developed by rapid methods, materials with the highest material quality will be grown in bulk form or as thin films by MBE and by MOCVD.
ALD-grown Ga2O3 will be explored with the goal of realizing ultra-low power synaptic nanoscale devices.
GraFOx builds on powerful, and in several cases unique, in-situ analytical methods. We use in-situ heating in TEM, in-situ Raman spectroscopy, and XRD performed in an MBE at the BESSY II synchrotron to study phase diagrams and phase transitions.
Coordinator: Martin Albrecht (IKZ) and Holger von Wenckstern (U Leipzig)