Unchartered territories in electronics and photonics made possible with Aluminum Nitride: an ultra wide-bandgap semiconductor

23rd September 2020

Timing : 1 pm EST

For zoom link to the talks, please email mjgc@mit.edu with your institute email and mention affiliation


For a list of all talks at the NanoBio seminar Series 2020, see here


Once every several decades a revolutionary semiconductor offers a convergence of physical properties that are disruptive and change the status quo. Several materials are now competing for this spot (e.g. 2D Materials, Gallium Oxide, Diamond, etc). But in the 2020s, the clear winner is the ultra-wide bandgap semiconductor aluminum nitride (AlN). The fundamental physics and material properties of AlN offer a unique convergence of large and direct bandgap, polarization-induced electron/hole doping, highly piezoelectric coupling for acoustic wave devices (with potential ferroelectricity), nonlinear optical properties, and epitaxial integration with nitride superconductors for quantum technologies: all in the same material! In this broader-view talk, I will discuss why I am so excited about AlN by sharing recent breakthroughs enabled by this remarkable semiconductor in the fields of -
a) high speed 5G and mm-wave communications,
b) nitride digital electronics,
c) photonics, and
d) quantum technologies.



Snow
Debdeep Jena
Professor, Cornell Electrical and Computer Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering Departments
Graduate Field Faculty, Cornell Applied and Engineering Physics
Cornell University

Dr. Debdeep Jena is the David E. Burr Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at Cornell University. He joined Cornell in 2015 from the faculty at Notre Dame where he was since August 2003, shortly after earning the Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). His research and teaching interests are in the MBE growth and device applications of quantum semiconductor heterostructures (III-V nitride and oxide semiconductors), investigation of charge transport in nanostructured semiconducting materials such as graphene, 2D crystals, nanowires and nanocrystals, and in the theory of charge, heat, and spin transport in nanomaterials. He has authored more than 300 scientific publications including articles in Science, Nature Journals, Physical Review Letters, Electron Device Letters, and Applied Physics Letters.