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Sunday, June 20, 2010

Nano-ordered semiconductors

Without too much of the fanfare the terminology used to identify various classes of semiconductors is gradually evolving as the semiconductor landscape is changing.  In terms of crystallographic structure for instance, terms "ordered" and "disordered" semiconductors are often being used instead of the more traditional terms "crystalline" and "non-crystalline" (amorphous) semiconductors. As the latter refer to the three-dimensional arrangements of atoms and to the corresponding geometry of physical interatomic bonds in the material, they do not adequately reflect the nature of organic semiconductors, for instance.

My experience shows that in order to cover the entire semiconductor field these days it is helpful to add a sub-class of "nano-ordered" semiconductors to the above "ordered-disordered" scheme.  The term is used in reference to the self-contained, crystallographically ordered semiconductor material systems which due to the extremely confined geometry (at least in one dimension less than about 5 nm - I agree, this number is rather arbitrary, but you are getting the idea...) feature different physical properties than their bulk counterparts. Obviously, we are talking  here nanowires, nanotubes, quantum dots, graphene, etc.

Posted by Jerzy Ruzyllo at 07:37 PM | Semiconductors | Comments (2) | Link



Jerzy Ruzyllo is a Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Penn State and in his spare time he likes to blog about semiconductors and related topics.


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Recent posts
Interesting times
Is there enough gallium?
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Nano-ordered semiconductors
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On sabbatical
Era of materials and elaborate material systems
Graphene comes to life


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