Fabien Massabuau (University of Strathclyde) 20th July 2022, 3pm, JA3.14
By 2070, the world population is predicted to reach 10.5B inhabitants, and manned space missions as well as settlements on Mars may be on Humanity’s agenda. These predictions forecast extreme pressures on water, food and waste resource management. These challenges are already tangible now, recognised by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and Net Zero targets.
Ultraviolet (UV) technologies can alleviate these pressures on our Society. The UV range of the electromagnetic spectrum is extremely important with applications including water and air purification, intensive agriculture, medical therapies, and electronics fabrication. Implemented in every household, UV light emission and its monitoring can achieve safe water at the tap, sanitise rooms, or extend shelf-life of food in fridges. Deployed for farming, these technologies can boost crop yields, enable underground farming, and allow reforestation of old farmlands to combat climate change. UV technologies have the potential for substantial impact on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
With a bandgap of ca. 5 eV, gallium oxide (Ga2O3) is the leading contender wide bandgap semiconductor for future power electronics and UV sensing application. This compound is highly polymorphic, with the corundum α phase variant (α-Ga2O3) displaying several indisputable assets: (i) it exhibits the largest bandgap (5.3 eV) amongst all phases, (ii) is isostructural with several other semiconducting group-III or transition metal sesquioxides (e.g. In2O3, Ti2O3) and (iii) with the cheap and widely available sapphire (α-Al2O3) substrate.
This presentation will give an overview of the group’s activities on α-Ga2O3 growth, characterisation, bandgap engineering and applications for UV sensing.