Zhang Lab - Emerging Materials and Devices

Research Projects

Emerging Materials and Devices beyond Si CMOS

The continued scaling of silicon CMOS electronics is approaching its fundamental limit. It motivates us to explore new materials and new information processing and storage devices for both existing and new functions to extend the integrated circuit scaling cadence. Our interests include (1) Develop new semiconductor materials, such as two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals materials, to replace silicon (or III-V, Ge) as alternate channel with atomic precision; (2) Develop new technologies to engineer the physical properties of emerging semiconductors in a highly controllable way (e.g. doping, source/drain contact, interface engineering, etc); (3) Develop new nanolithography and nanofabrication techniques for emerging materials and improved chip technology; (4) Develop new technologies for heterogeneous integration of multiple functions and dissimilar materials; (5) Develop new interconnect and dielectric materials.



Neuromorphic Computing

The conventional computer architecture, also known as von Neumann architecture, has physically separated computing and memory units. The data shuttling between the computing and memory units leads to high power consumption and long latency. Inspired by the human brain that processes massive neural signals in an extremely energy-efficient manner, we investigate neuromorphic computing as a promising approach to overcome the “memory wall” bottleneck through in-memory computing. New materials and devices are developed to build an energy-efficient neuromorphic computing system, typically composed of a network of artificial neurons and the interconnects among them – the synapses.



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Large-scale CVD Synthesis of Emerging Nanomaterials

Scalable synthesis of emerging materials is critical for industrial applications and mass-production. We develop chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method to synthesize emerging nanomaterials with electronic grade quality and low cost. In particular, we investigate the CVD growth of 2D materials, such as graphene, tellurene (p-type semiconductor), and transition-metal dichalcogenides, with controlled uniformity, thickness and doping level.



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Metasurfaces and Tunable Photonic Devices

Metasurface is a layer of subwavelength-scale nanostructures that can precisely control the phase shift of the electromagnetic waves. Metasurface-based optical devices can achieve various optical functionalities, including polarization control, spectrum filtering, imaging and hologram generation, etc. We develop new materials and technologies for the fabrication and manipulation of ultrathin metalens and their heterogeneous integration with other platforms. We also build photonic device by leveraging the tunable optoelectronic properties of 2D materials for infrared sensing, THz and imaging applications.

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