Our report from Hefei (by Li Junjie) - Reporters learned from the University of Science and Technology of China that the team led by Professor Zhang Shuchen, in collaboration with Chinese and foreign scholars, has made significant progress in the field of novel semiconductor materials. For the first time, the team achieved the controllable construction of in-plane programmable, atomically flat "mosaic" heterojunctions in two-dimensional ionic soft lattice materials, paving the way for the future development of high-performance light-emitting and integrated devices. The relevant results were recently published online in the international academic journal Nature.
In the field of semiconductors, the ability to precisely construct heterostructures laterally within the plane of materials is crucial for exploring novel physical properties, developing new types of devices, and promoting device miniaturization. However, ionic soft lattice semiconductors, represented by two-dimensional halide perovskites, have flexible and unstable crystal structures. Traditional lithographic processing and other techniques often damage the material structure due to overly violent reactions, making it difficult to achieve high-quality lateral heterostructure integration. How to achieve high-quality, controllable epitaxial lateral heterojunction precision processing in such materials is a challenging problem in this field.
Facing this challenge, the research team from the University of Science and Technology of China innovatively proposed and developed a method to guide the "self-etching" of internal stress within crystals. This method precisely refills different types of semiconductor materials, ultimately constructing a high-quality "mosaic" heterojunction with continuous lattice and atomically flat interfaces within a single wafer.