Nanostructured Materials for High Performance Integrated Electronics, Sensors and Energy Harvesting

Speaker:Prof. Dr. Zhiyong Fan (HKUST)

Time and Date: 10:00- , Dec. 26, 2014

Place: Room 301, Electric Light Source Building, Handan Campus

 

 

Abstract

Materials made of nano/micro-structures have unique physical properties, such as fast carrier transport, high surface-to-volume ratio, mechanical flexibility, sub-wavelength optical waveguiding, etc. These intriguing properties can be harnessed for a variety of applications in electronics and photonics. In the past, we have fabricated an assortment of semiconductor nanowires, including Si, Ge, CdSe, InAs, ZnO, etc. We have performed systematic investigations on electronic and optoelectronic properties of these materials by configuring them as transistors, photodiodes and sensors. More importantly, we have developed scalable processes to integrate semiconductor nanowires into ordered arrays for large scale electronic applications. Utilizing these approaches, we have fabricated all-nanowire based high frequency devices and integrated circuits with functionality. In the meantime, we have developed several self-organized approaches to fabricate three-dimensional (3-D) nanostructures. These 3-D structures have demonstrated geometry dependent photon management property thus have promising potential for photonic applications. In particular, we have fabricated 3-D nanopillar arrays, nanospike arrays and nanowell arrays. Optical absorption properties of these nano-engineered structures have been investigated with experimental methods as well as theoretical simulations. To explore their photonic applications, nanopillar and nanospike arrays have been fabricated into photovoltaic devices; preliminary results have shown that they can demonstrate improved performance as compared to planar control samples, indicating their potency for cost-effective solar cells.

 

 

Biography

Dr. Zhiyong Fan received his B. S. and M. S. degrees in Materials Science from Fudan University, Shanghai, China, in 1998 and 2001. He received Ph.D. degree from University of California, Irvine in 2006 in Materials Science as well. From 2007 to 2010, he worked at University of California, Berkeley as a postdoctoral fellow in department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, with a joint appointment with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In May 2010, he joined The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) as an assistant professor in department of Electronic and Computer Engineering. Currently he is serving as a steering committee member of HKUST William Mong Institute of Nano Science and Technology, and a scientific committee member of HKUST Energy Institute. He also serves as an editorial borad member of Nature Publish Group Scientific Reports and Assistant Editor of Springer Nanoscale Research Letters. Dr. Fan’s research interest focuses on fabrication and characterization of nanomaterials and nanostructures, their applications for electronics and energy harvesting. He has published over 90 referred papers on Nature Materials, Nature Communications, PNAS, Nano Letters, Advanced Materials, etc., with more than 5,000 citations.