Engineered carrier transport in nanostructured semiconductors using functional disorder.

Introduction

Disorder is generally considered to have a purely negative impact on carrier transport, and most efforts aim to minimize it. However, recent studies suggest that disorder may enhance carrier transport via carrier funneling along energetic gradients or promote carrier interconversion at defect sites. Critically though, before disorder can be exploited for improved optoelectronic performance of nanomaterials, a better understanding of the relationship between disorder and transport is needed.

Project Goals

EnVision aims to build a bridge between fundamental observations of the benefits of disorder and materials engineering. To enable this, I have designed a two-fold strategy focused on:

1. Defining the detailed design rules for the rational design of disorder-driven carrier transport and interconversion.
2. Developing strategies to engineer the local energy landscapes of nanostructured semiconductors that boost carrier transport and interconversion.

Methodology

To enable the definition of the detailed design rules, I will take the crucial step of developing Hyperspectral Transient Microscopy – the first super-resolution technique capable of simultaneously visualizing the transport of carriers in space, time, and energy.

Using metal-halide perovskites as a versatile testbed, EnVision will make critical advances beyond the current state-of-the-art in:

• Promoting carrier transport along compositional gradients.
• Boosting carrier interconversion at local dopant sites.
• Creating on-demand energy landscapes using nanoindentation.

Conclusion

Through its unique approach, EnVision will introduce the concept of functional disorder, paving the way for new formalisms in nanomaterial engineering and guiding the realization of fully optimized energy landscapes for optoelectronic and photonic technologies.