Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

The roots of the currently unfolding technological revolution that brought about personal computers, high-speed internet, digital cameras, and flat panel displays&mdash;to mention just some examples from the commodity sector&mdash;can be traced directly to advances in the engineering of very thin films of artificial materials and their subsequent processing into ever smaller devices with well controlled functionalities. <br /> <br /> The highest performance electronic devices, such as transistors used in PCs, smartphones or satellites, and photonic devices, such as semiconductor lasers, amplifiers, and detectors, are all based on highly perfect crystalline multilayers of semiconductor materials, deposited in the so-called epitaxial process onto crystalline substrates. The performance of these devices depends not only on the exact thicknesses and material compositions of the individual sub-layers, but also depends critically on the precise engineering of the electron concentrations in every element of such device. To achieve such precision the use of highly accurate, high-resolution metrology tools is necessary. For the semiconductor industry and for R&amp;D activities that rely on multilayer epitaxial structures, there is only one such tool with the required capabilities - the Electrochemical Capacitance Voltage Profiler (ECVP), the subject of the present grant application. <br /> <br /> This tool will greatly enhance the current and the future research programs of the applicants and their teams, facilitating groundbreaking research, such as that conducted at the Quantum-Nano Centre Molecular Beam Epitaxy (QNC MBE) Facility at the University of Waterloo (UW). The lab launched its operation in June 2014; the focus of activities at the QNC MBE is on the epitaxial growth of advanced quantum devices for research at the frontiers of photonics, nanoelectronics, spintronics and quantum computing.&nbsp; This research address both the short and long term challenges of Canadian high-tech sectors in environmental monitoring, alternative clean energy sources, health, security and Information and Communications Technologies. The proposed ECVP tool will also leverage other research programs and infrastructure at the UW; the tool has applications in characterizing photovoltaic devices fabricated at the Centre for Advanced Photovoltaic Devices and Systems (CAPDS), as well as thin film transistors (TFTs) and other semiconductor films fabricated at the Giga-to-Nano Centre (G2N) at the UW. <br /> <br />