24 January 2023

Dr. Sanjay Banerjee is pleased to announce that Xiao Wang (Advisor: Ananth Dodabalapur) and Yimeng Wang (Advisor: Emanuel Tutuc) will present seminars as winners of the Ben Streetman Prize for 2022-23 at the Microelectronics Research Center. The seminar will be held in Conference Room MER 2.114, THURSDAY, January 26th, 2023 at 2pm . Dr. Ben Streetman will be in attendance to present the awards. Refreshments will be served at the event.

Xiao Wang (Senior Winner, $1,000)

“Contact Engineering of Organic Thin Film Transistors”

Yimeng Wang (Junior Winner, $500)

“Dichotomy of Thermodynamic and Transport Properties in Twisted Double-Bilayer Graphene”

Dr. Xiao Wang

We are excited to unveil news that Professor Ananth Dodabalapur has been selected as a fellow for the National Academy of Inventors. This is a prestigious distinction awarded to a select group of 164 academic innovators around the world for 2021

Fellows selects are innovators have made important discoveries in a variety of areas. They’ve contributed to major leaps in semiconductors and processors, helping usher in today’s unprecedented technological boom. They’ve developed environmentally friendly solvents and processes for major industrial uses. And they’ve created materials and catalysts to improve medical imaging, gene editing, drug delivery, environmental monitoring and more.

Professor Dodabalapur is one among five engineers and scientists from The University of Texas at Austin selected for this award. Other UT Austin Faculty includes Yi Lu, Joan Brennecke, Earl Swartzlander, and Sanjay Banerjee.

To find out more about this news, follow this link.

Congratulations, Dr. Michael Rodder! We are proud to spotlight Mike’s recent award for his impactful doctoral work on TMD FETs. Access Dr. Rodder’s dissertation here.

The Margarida Jacome Dissertation Prize is a prestigious award established in memory of Dr. Margarida Jacome, a Texas ECE computer engineering professor from 1994 to 2007. Through this award, we are pleased that we can continue Dr. Jacome’s legacy of excellence in research by annually recognizing a graduate student in ECE who has demonstrated excellence in his/her Ph.D. research and dissertation.

Prof. Ananth Dodabalapur, along with Prof. Eric Anslyn (CNS Department of Chemistry), Dr. Praveen Pasupathy (research associate of ECE), has received a $1 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation to create a new data storage and retrieval paradigm centered around synthetic polymers, a class of materials that are made up of a large number of similar molecules bonded together, such as polyurethane.

To read more about this exciting new collaboration and research, follow this link.

We are excited to announce that Prof. Dodabalapur along with Prof. Jaydeep Kulkarn have a received a grant from the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) to develop 3-Dimensional memory technologies. Michael Rodder and Xiao Wang will be taking the lead on grant for the Dodabalapur group.

To read more about it, follow this link.

In this challenging time where the novel COVID-19 pandemic is impacting the world, Dr. Dodabalapur analyzes the efficacy of the USA’s testing and reporting on the spread and impact on our country. Follow this link to read the full report: COVID Calculations Report

Abstract:
The time evolution of COVID-19 cases in the USA is highly inaccurate as a result of serious testing inefficiencies and biases, especially in the earlier stages. In this report, the corrected time evolution of such cases is reconstructed from death data, the average time between case recording and death in China, and the estimated overall death rate of COVID cases. The corrected time evolution in number of cases is compared to the officially reported case number evolution and a huge discrepancy exists between the two. The findings indicate that (i) the pandemic likely started earlier than though; (ii) the official number of cases is underreported by more than a factor of about 10; and (iii) the rate of increase in the calculated number of cases with time is slightly less compared to that of reported data.

Congratulations to Xiao Wang on publishing his paper “Trapped Carrier Scattering: Trapped Carrier Scattering and Charge Transport in High‐Mobility Amorphous Metal Oxide Thin‐Film Transistors” and making the cover of Annalen der Physik. In his publication, Xiao built upon the existing MTR model by including the impact of scattering and screening on extended-state transport.

Abstract
The multiple trap and release (MTR) model is extended to more completely and accurately describe charge transport in high‐mobility amorphous metal oxide thin‐film transistors (TFTs). In addition to trapping and release of charges, other scattering mechanisms that influence mobility are considered along with screening by free carriers. The mobility for each of the dominant scattering mechanisms is calculated using the Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) in the relaxation time approximation. It is found that trapped carriers very effectively scatter the charges that move in extended states. This type of scattering is unique to TFTs. Experimental data from high‐mobility amorphous metal oxide TFTs are compared with calculations with very good agreement. At high temperatures, scattering by longitudinal optical phonons and surface phonons becomes significant. This work represents the first successful combination of charge carrier scattering and the BTE with thermally activated MTR transport in a disordered semiconductor. Charge transport in amorphous metal oxide transistors is quantitatively described for the first time and the factors that influence the mobility at various temperatures and charge carrier densities are clearly described. This approach can be used for describing transport in several amorphous and polycrystalline semiconductors with significant disorder and trapping.

We are excited to highlight Xin Xu’s Nanoletters publication titled “Enhanced Photoresponse in Metasurface-Integrated Organic Photodetectors“, where he was able to demonstrate the first experimental use of phase-gradient metasurfaces to achieve relatively broadband enhancement of the efficiency of organic photodiodes.

Abstract
In this work, we experimentally demonstrate metasurface-enhanced photoresponse in organic photodetectors. We have designed and integrated a metasurface with broadband functionality into an organic photodetector, with the goal of significantly increasing the absorption of light and generated photocurrent from 560 up to 690 nm. We discuss how the metasurface can be integrated with the fabrication of an organic photodiode. Our results show large gains in responsivity from 1.5× to 2× between 560 and 690 nm.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b05261

Congratulations to Dr. Seohee Kim, whose publication titled “Polarization effects from the ambient and the gate dielectric on charge transport in polymer field-effect transistors” was selected by Applied Physics Letters (APL) as the Editor’s Choice. Using a FET device featuring high mobility polymer PDPP2T-TT-OD and a bilayer gate dielectric, Dr. Kim showed polarization induced trapping enhancement through a series of experiments that modified the conditions of the surface dielectric and introduced polar analytes to the atmosphere.

The full article can be found here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4986439

(a) The chemical structure of PDPP2T-TT-OD and (b) the device structure of PDPP2T-TT-OD bilayer dielectric FETs.
Copyright © 2017 Author(s)

Our recent work creating high-performance inkjet-printed carbon nanotube (CNT) transistors was summarized and highlighted by the Cockrell School of Engineering. The following is an excerpt from the article:

“We think our carbon nanontube transistor is an important step toward high-performing, low-cost printed electronics, such as smart labels, TV screens, sensors and green electronics,” said Dodabalapur, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

The team’s breakthrough is the development of a carbon nanotube transistor structure for inkjet printing with small channel lengths (by the standards of printed electronics), which allow electrons to travel along the length of the tube and conduct electricity faster. The device’s geometry, with channel lengths of 150-250 nanometers, is the shortest channel length reported thus far in which the active material is deposited by inkjet printing.

To view the full article, please click here.