On July 22, 2016, Prof. Joshua M. O. Zide from University of Delaware visited Suzhou Institute of Nano-Tech & Nano-bionics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SINANO) invited by Prof. LYU Weibang, and made a report named “Novel Semiconductor and Epitaxial Nanocomposite Materials for Energy Conversion and Optoelectronic Applications”.

Advances in electronic materials (specifically, semiconductors and nanocomposites) enable new device technologies and improve the properties of existing technologies. In this talk, Prof. Joshua M. O. Zide presented efforts within his group on the growth of new materials by molecular beam epitaxy and the resulting advances in solar cells, thermoelectrics, and optoelectronics.

Specifically, Prof. Joshua M. O. Zide discussed two material systems: one is nanocomposites consisting of metallic nanoparticles (such as ErAs and TbAs) within III-V semiconductors (such as InGaAs and GaAs), and the other is dilute bismuthide semiconductors in which bismuth is incorporated into III-V materials to reduce the bandgap significantly, with unique band alignments that cannot be easily achieved in other materials. In these new materials, electronic, thermal, and optical properties can be quite different from those of conventional materials, with significant promise for applications in a variety of (opto) electronic devices.