FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — A University of Arkansas (U of A) professor and a team of researchers will take the lead in establishing the first Energy Frontier Research Center in Arkansas.
Shui-Qing “Fisher” Yu, an electrical engineering professor at the University of Arkansas, will lead a team of researchers in receiving $10.35 million from the US Department of Energy to establish an Energy Frontier Research Center.
The University says the Center for Manipulation of Atomic Ordering for Manufacturing Semiconductors will be dedicated to investigating the formation of atomic orders in semiconductor alloys and their effects on various physical properties.
The U of A says this research program will enable reliable, cost-effective and transformative manufacturing of semiconductors, which is the essential material used in computers and other electric devices.
This four-year grant is part of the US Energy Department’s $540 million research funding dedicated to universities and national laboratories focused on clean energy technologies with the ultimate goal to create and develop low-carbon manufacturing processes that will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
The award is based on the multi-institutional team’s recent discovery that atoms in the alloy silicon germanium tin, a semiconducting material, demonstrate a short-range order in a periodic lattice. This discovery had a significant effect on the energy band gap.
In addition to Yu, the team comprises four colleagues in the Department of Physics — Distinguished Professor Greg Salamo, assistant professor Jin Hu, associate professor Hugh Churchill and assistant professor Hiro Nakamura — and several researchers at other institutions. The U of A will lead researchers from Arizona State University, George Washington University, Stanford University, University of California Berkeley, Dartmouth College, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, University of Arkansas Pine Bluff, University of Delaware and Sandia National Laboratory.
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