JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #136 - September/October 2020 - 63

Advanced Composite Materials Facility, University of Southampton

High-throughput combinatorial optimisation
of new materials for metamaterial applications
From their emergence as a paradigm for engineering new passive electromagnetic properties,
metamaterial concepts have extended rapidly to
include a vast array of dynamic - switchable, tunable, reconfigurable, and nonlinear optical functionalities. This is typically achieved through the
hybridization of plasmonic (noble metal) metamaterials/surfaces with active media.
To mitigate the substantial losses encountered
in noble metals at optical frequencies, while also
improving manufacturing process practicality
and compatibility with established optoelectronic technologies, considerable resources have been
devoted of late to the discovery and engineering
of alternative media.
Here, the ACMF adopts a high-throughput combinatorial approach to the search for alternative
media for metamaterial applications. This can
enable a host of revolutionary new devices in a
single nanostructured film. In particular, the team
concentrates on the chalcogenide family of materials. By virtue of their high refractive index and
topological surface states, chalcogenide glasses
provide a unique dielectric platform for realising
plasmonic and/or guided mode resonant reflection and transmission properties that can be reconfigured.

Professor Brian E Hayden,
Professor of
Physical Chemistry
director of the Advanced
Composite Materials
University of
Southampton Facility

Discovery, optimization and manufacture of 2D chalcogenides
A low-temperature (350°C) synthesis of high-quality 2D MoS2 (single or multilayer) using ePVD has been demonstrated, with applications both in combinatorial discovery of
new 2D mixed sulphides, or in device manufacture on up to 300mm wafers. These layers
can be directly synthesized on amorphous or polycrystalline surfaces, providing a key step
in any future CMOS process.
A false colour image showing the thickness dependence (measured by AFM) of a
MoS2 thin film masked in an array of 14x14 1mm fields using the duel shutter method:
Thicknesses range from 0.5-13nm (ca. 1-20ML). The quality and thickness of layers was
fully characterized by Raman spectroscopy, photoluminescence, AFM and XRD. Highthroughput screening methodologies allowing optimizing of electrical devices such as
FETS is underway.
A photograph which shows the array of 196 fabricated FET devices on a substrate (Fig.2),
together with an SEM of one of the device structures. Combinatorial synthetic methods
allow a variation in composition or thickness of 2-D materials over the array.

Fig. 2: MoS2 thin film false colour image of thickness dependence

Professor Brian E Hayden is Professor of Physical Chemistry within the University of Southampton and director
of the Advanced Composite Materials Facility (ACMF). He obtained his PhD in Bristol in 1979 in Surface Science
and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society (1979-1984) developing
surface-sensitive optical spectroscopies. Appointed lecturer at the University of Bath (1984-1988), he developed
supersonic molecular beam techniques to study reaction dynamics on single crystal metal surfaces. He was appointed lecturer at the University of Southampton in 1988, promoted to senior lecturer in 1990, reader in 1993,
and appointed to a Personal Chair in 1995. In 2000, he extended thin film methodologies to the combinatorial
synthesis and screening of solid-state materials.
He is a founder (2004), an executive director and Chief Scientific Officer of Ilika plc, a £50M spin-out company
involved in materials discovery and development for the electronics and energy sectors, and with strong partnerships with multinational corporations. He is author of over 140 refereed papers and over 18 active patent families,
including new catalysts and materials for low-temperature fuel cells and solid-state Li-ion batteries. He is a Fellow
of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Fellow of the Institute of Physics.

N°136 September - October 2020

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JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #136 - September/October 2020

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