NeGeMat aims to bring 2 new materials formed of earth-abundant and non (or low) toxicity elements to the realm of electronic devices. Many devices depend on scarce or toxic elements, for example most IR detectors used nowadays (motion detection, night vision, etc...) are based on MCT, which stands for mercury cadmium telluride, which are highly toxic and scarce. Bringing the possibility of new materials for fabrication of devices with more abundant elements can also reduce the need for elements mined in countries involved in conflicts for mining of minerals.
To achieve this, the project uses computational and experimental lab work to fabricate thin films (the needed architecture for fabrication of devices) of two materials, Sr3GeO and Sr2MnGe2O7. Sr3GeO is a narrow bandgap semiconductor which could be used for IR sensing applications, while Sr2MnGe2O7 has been predicted to be a Weyl semimetal, a new type of topologically non-trivial material that would bring new possibilities for the fabrication of new devices.
The project uses a combination of ab-initio calculations (density functional theory or DFT) together with thermodynamic calculations using the CALculation of PHAse Diagrams (CALPHAD) framework to predict the best conditions of temperature, pressure, etc... for the synthesis of thin films of these two materials by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). This approach also reduces the waste created in trials without a clear guidance from such a strong modelling prior to the experimental synthesis of the materials.
