Professor Matthew Panthani will present a seminar on:

Group IV Semiconductor Nanomaterials: A Route to Faster and Energy-efficient Computing

Abstract:

Continued scientific and technological advancements in computing and microelectronics have resulted in massive improvements in healthcare, and technological advancement, and global development. However, the energy consumption that is attributed to information and communication technology is a growing concern. Integrated photonic circuits could dramatically reduce the energy cost of computing, while also improving computational speed. However, crystalline Si — the backbone of microelectronics—is a poor platform for integrated photonics due to its indirect bandgap, which makes light-emission a forbidden process. Existing optoelectronic materials are incompatible with our existing complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor infrastructure, which makes it difficult to fabricate integrated photonic circuits with the scalability and precision of Si-based microelectronics.

I will present my group’s recent work in synthesizing nanostructured Si and other Group IV semiconductor nanomaterials, including nanocrystals and nanosheets with precise control over their size and surface chemistry. Using NMR, IR spectroscopy, and atomic pair distribution function analysis to gain insight in their local coordination and long-range order. The optoelectronic properties are sensitive to the structure and interfacial chemistry. Using ultrafast spectroscopy, there is evidence of a “direct-like” optical transition in 2D Si nanosheets, which is corroborated by DFT simulations of the band structure. I will also share recent work related to the thermal stability of 2D silicon nanosheets, demonstrating their structure and photoluminescence are stable to temperatures far beyond what they would experience in real applications.

Biography:

Matthew G. Panthani is an Associate Professor and the Herbert L. Stiles Faculty Fellow in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Iowa State University. He received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering at Case Western Reserve University and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin under the direction of Prof. Brian A. Korgel. Prior to joining the faculty at Iowa State, he was a postdoctoral research associate in Dmitri Talapin’s research group at University of Chicago. His research group focuses on synthesizing new inorganic and hybrid organic-inorganic materials with tailored properties for optoelectronic applications such as solar cells, next-generation computing, and telecommunications technologies. He has received the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award (2017) and the National Science Foundation Early CAREER Development Award (2019). His research group has been supported by the AFOSR, Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, and Army Research Office. He has published more than 40 peer-reviewed journal articles, holds four U.S. patents, and has started one company. Currently, he and his group are focused on designing and creating novel materials and devices for faster, energy-efficient computing technologies.

Host: Dr. Igor Fedin