New Germaniun-based materials for Green electronics

The current electronics present in everyone’s daily lives are made up of several different materials, some of which are scarce, toxic or even both.

Developing new toxic-free widely available materials that could take part in the same processes would help the environment, with less toxic elements being disposed of.

Furthermore, using widely available elements could also lead to a lower price, making electronics more available throughout the world.This project focuses on the synthesis of thin films of two materials, which would be a world first, formed of widely available, non-toxic elements, Sr3GeO and Sr2MnGe2O7.

The first is a narrow band gap semiconductor, and could replace highly toxic ones in use as mercury cadmium telluride.

The second has recently been proposed as a Weyl semimetal.The fabrication of these materials as epitaxial thin films will enable the development of devices based on them, bringing us forward to greener electronics and creating scientific knowledge on new materials and their properties that could lead to many more applications.