Description:
Reference #: 01249
The University of South Carolina is offering licensing opportunities for using a production process for a thin film material, which can lead to a very viable manufacturing process for highly efficient transistors and other electronic devices.
Background:
Since the discovery of graphene, there has been an increase in researching the scalability of two-dimensional (2D) materials down to atomic dimensions. Among the analogs of graphene, transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are attractive due to their exceptional electronic and optoelectronic properties. MoS2, a TMD, has several advantages over graphene and the industry workhorse, silicon, including a thickness-dependent band gap. Excellent transistor performance has been reported on small area exfoliated samples, underscoring the promise of this material. The key obstacle in the commercialization of MoS2 technology is low carrier mobility over large areas for top-down devices. Although there were several early research reports on the synthesis of atomically thin MoS2 with moderate mobility, transferring large area grown films to a substrate of choice leads to interface charges that degrade mobility. As a result, a vast majority of the recent reports exhibited results obtained from exfoliated MoS2 or transferred films from some other source.
Invention Description:
The subject invention allows a thin film material (MoS2) to be produced at a significantly lower temperature, which leads to a more viable manufacturing process for highly efficient transistors and other electronic devices. The quality of the synthetic material is approaching its high quality naturally sourced counterparts, but offers an advantage in regard to large-scale manufacturing. The invention demonstrates some potential applications of this new technology in electronics and optoelectronics.
Potential Applications:
This invention solves the thermal degradation issue of insulators used in electronic devices during the material (MoS2) synthesis, and also lowers the overall process temperature significantly. The degradation of insulator typically adds complexity to the MoS2 synthesis process and in many cases may even prohibit the successful application of the material. The potential application of this higher quality material is in high-speed electronics (transistors and diodes), efficient optoelectronic devices (solar cells and photo-detectors), and highly sensitive chemical sensors.
Advantages and Benefits:
(1) Lowers the synthesis process temperature, which simplifies reactor design and lowers the fixed and running costs.
(2) Improves material quality significantly.
(3) Prevents the thermal degradation of the insulator, which eliminates many complicated process steps.
(4) Materials grown using this method can compete with the natural crystals, which cannot be used in industrial scale.
(5) Allows integration of MoS2 into many emerging fields of electronics that could benefit from its properties.