POSTECH Professor Son Junwoo's Research Team Develops Low-Temperature Synthesis Method for Next-Generation Semiconductor Materials

[Asia Economy Reporter Changhwan Lee] Samsung Electronics announced on the 17th that a research team led by Professor Junwoo Son of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at POSTECH (first author: PhD student Yoonkyu Park, corresponding author: Professor Junwoo Son) has developed the world's first technology to synthesize highly crystalline rutile TiO₂, which previously could only be synthesized at high temperatures above 500 degrees Celsius, at low temperatures (50~150 degrees Celsius).

The research results were published on the 16th (local time in the UK) in the world-renowned academic journal Nature Communications.

Rutile TiO₂ is a high-dielectric material attracting attention as a material for next-generation devices such as high-performance DRAM and 3D monolithic semiconductors. Due to its high dielectric constant, it can store a large amount of charge even at low voltages.

However, synthesizing rutile TiO₂ requires very high temperatures, which posed challenges in electronic device fabrication. Additionally, at low temperatures, oxygen vacancies?where oxygen atoms are missing from positions in the crystal lattice where they should be?occur easily, making it difficult to achieve uniform quality sufficient to realize high-performance devices. In the device industry, which relies on fine processes, material uniformity greatly affects production yield.

The method discovered by Professor Son's team allows sufficient supply of oxygen ions even at relatively low temperatures, enabling the production of rutile TiO₂ with almost no oxygen vacancies and uniform quality. Based on this, the team plans to focus on developing next-generation semiconductor devices.

Professor Son said, "While conducting oxide heterojunction research supported by the Future Technology Development Program, we accidentally discovered this phenomenon," adding, "This is the first study to demonstrate that oxide crystallization is possible through ion migration at the interface instead of heat."

This research has been conducted since September 2017 with support from Samsung Electronics' Future Technology Development Center.

Meanwhile, the Samsung Future Technology Development Program has been supporting national future science and technology research with a budget of 1.5 trillion KRW over 10 years since 2013, and has so far allocated 718.9 billion KRW in research funds to 561 projects.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.