SPP 2477:  Nitrides4Future – Novel Materials and Device Concepts

• Subject Area: Computer Science, Systems and Electrical Engineering ; Chemistry ; Materials Science and Engineering ; Physics
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 540851193

Semiconductors are the backbone of modern microelectronics – a key technology for driving innovations. Besides silicon, gallium nitride has been established as reliable platform. The high potential of the material class of nitrides stems from the extraordinarily broad spectrum of material properties: semiconducting, metallic, piezoelectric, ferroelectric or superconducting. Nitride semiconductors are already used commercially in photonic devices such as LEDs and laser diodes as well as in high-frequency and power electronic devices. However, this should not obscure the fact that further development of nitride technology is still strongly limited by the properties of the materials mostly investigated so far. For instance, the efficiency of UVC LEDs is still very low because the defect densities typical of nitrides have a much stronger effect in UVC LEDs than in blue LEDs. For power electronic devices, approaches for realizing vertical device architectures for higher breakdown voltage, higher currents, or normally-off transistors are being studied. However, piezoelectric and ferroelectric properties of some of the new metal nitrides have not been applied at all in device architectures. This could be a very exciting approach, e.g. for the realization of ferroelectric memories and in combination with photonic devices for optical neuromorphic computing. Furthermore, they have enormous potential as piezoelectric acoustic filters in communication electronics. There is also growing evidence that several ternary metal nitrides (beyond the best known representative AlScN) possess highest electro-optic coefficients. Such materials are being considered as promising substitutes for LiNbO3 and could pave the way for a future technology for fabricating photonic circuits for the blue/UV spectral region. Each of the described functionalities are attractive in their own right. However, the combination of the functionalities in one device holds particularly great potential for a disruptive evolution of nitride technology. The potential combination of photonic, electronic, ferroelectric, and electro-optic properties in a single material family is unique. The goal of the priority program is to explore and systematically improve the properties of novel nitrides (such as alloys of AlN with CrN, YN, LaN, YbN, and MoN), and to subsequently realize device architectures that exploit the multitude of functionalities.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• International Connection: China, Finland, USA

Projects

• Coordination Funds (Applicant Schimmel, Saskia )
• Exploration of Chemical Precursors for Deposition of Wurtzite-Structured Ferroelectric Aluminum Nitride-Based Thin Films (ExPreFAN) (Applicants Devi, Anjana ;  Schröder, Uwe )
• Exploring the upper limits of piezoelectric polarization in ternary metal nitrides (Acronym: Piezo-Explorer) (Applicants Ambacher, Oliver ;  Krischok, Stefan )
• Func4Punc - Functionalization of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs by additive ferroelectric AlScN for efficient power conversion (Applicants Heitmann, Johannes ;  Kapels, Holger )
• Integrated acousto-NEMS on monolithic new-nitride thin films (Applicants Ngo, Ha Duong ;  Sharp, Ph.D., Ian D. ;  Weiß, Matthias ;  Yuan, Mingyun )
• Rare-earth nitride based heterostructures for integrated thermoelectrics (Applicants Dinh, Ph.D., Van Duc ;  Koblmüller, Gregor ;  Wagner, Markus R. )
• Scandium nitride-based templates lattice-matched to conventional III-nitrides – BIFRÖST (Applicants Chatterjee, Sangam ;  Waag, Andreas )
• Ternary metal nitrides – exploring fundamental optical and electronic properties towards ferroelectric functional structures (Applicants Beenken, Wichard Johann Daniel ;  Schmidt-Grund, Rüdiger )
• Tuning piezo- and ferroelectric properties of III-nitrides by alloying with metal nitrides – crystallization from N2- and NH3-based solutions and gas phases guided by atomistic sim-ulations (PiezoTUNE) (Applicants Schimmel, Saskia ;  Zahn, Dirk )
• Understanding the Limits of Switching Endurance in Nitride Ferroelectrics Through Advanced Analytic Methods: Towards Fatigue-Free AlScN -Devices [UNLimit] (Applicants Fichtner, Simon ;  Müller, Martina ;  Wolff, Niklas )

• Spokesperson: Dr.-Ing. Saskia Schimmel