Researchers have created a new material that uses 'redox gating' to control the movement of electrons in and out of a semiconducting material.As the integrated circuits that power our electronic devices get more powerful, they are also getting smaller. This trend of microelectronics has only accelerated in recent years as scientists try to fit increasingly more semiconducting components on a chip.
"Redox" refers to a chemical reaction that causes a transfer of electrons. Microelectronic devices typically rely on an electric"field effect" to control the flow of electrons to operate. In the experiment, the scientists designed a device that could regulate the flow of electrons from one end to another by applying a voltage -- essentially, a kind of pressure that pushes electricity -- across a material that acted as a kind of electron gate.
"Controlling the electronic properties of a material also has significant advantages for scientists seeking emergent properties beyond conventional devices," said Argonne materials scientist Wei Chen, one of the study's co-corresponding authors. Work done at Argonne's Advanced Photon Source, a DOE Office of Science user facility, helped characterize the redox gating behavior.
The work was funded by DOE's Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, and Argonne's laboratory-directed research and development program.Le Zhang, Changjiang Liu, Hui Cao, Andrew J. Erwin, Dillon D. Fong, Anand Bhattacharya, Luping Yu, Liliana Stan, Chongwen Zou, Matthew V. Tirrell, Hua Zhou, Wei Chen.The hardness of a material normally is set by the strength of chemical bonds between electrons of neighboring atoms, not by freely flowing conduction electrons.
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