Session: Rising Stars of Mechanical Engineering Celebration & Showcase

Paper Number: 148632

148632 - Quantum Manufacturing of Heterogeneous Lateral Semiconductor-Superconductor Junctions (Q-Meleon) 

This research project aims to innovate scalable nanomanufacturing of two-dimensional topological materials and the control of their structures and properties for high-performance quantum devices. The target materials are tellurene nanoribbons and other chemically derived tellurides nanoribbons, which have potential applications in nanoelectronics, quantum devices, mid-infrared photonics, and wearable sensors. The project employs scalable solution synthesis to identify the nucleation and growth mechanisms in these materials and gain the critical process-structure-property knowledge required for optimal production of tellurene nanoribbons with desired properties.

2D materials based topological heterostructures exhibit unique advantages: (1) many Majorana bound states (MBS) relevant phenomena emerge in the atomically thin limit; (2) 2D heterostructures hybridizing s-wave superconductivity and spin-helical states have been shown to exhibit state resembling that of p-wave superconductors, significantly expanding the materials base that could potentially host MBS; (3) the atomically thin nature allows versatile electrostatic modulation inaccessible to bulk/thin-film materials for engineering-related quantum states. However, the state-of-the-art 2D quantum materials face multiple challenges for the exploration, validation, and utilization of MBS: (1) The lack of bandgap in known Dirac or Weyl semimetals (e.g., Cd3As2, MoTe2, etc.) diminishes the opportunity for achieving gate-tunable qubits and the possibility of observing MBS; (2) Current approaches fall short in the scalable, bottom-up synthesis of 2D lateral heterostructures with atomically sharp, clean, and electronically transparent interfaces needed for gate-tunable qubits with improved coherence. The van der Waals surface of 2D materials also obstructs the metallization for forming low-loss contacts; (3) The synthesis of related materials (e.g., Bi2Te3, MoTe2, etc.) is restricted by the epitaxial substrates and conditions which are largely incompatible with CMOS processes. These limitations associated with the current material technologies have hampered the fundamental exploration and technical advance of topological quantum computing.

Two-dimensional quantum spin Hall materials, such as tellurene nanoribbons, host topologically protected edge states that can enable fast charge transport with minimum power dissipation for high-speed, energy-efficient electronics. The critical challenges to deploying these materials are to manufacture them without expensive epitaxial substrates and control over their dimensions, phase, and defect content for practical applications. Scalable solution synthesis presents multiple benefits over conventional approaches to fabricate nanomaterials. It enables excellent process homogeneity and reproducibility, rapid screening of reaction parameters, and customized products with high throughput at reasonable costs. The scientific understanding and technical capability for manufacturing two-dimensional quantum materials using solution processes are missing. This research is to discover the fundamental basis for producing, engineering, and deploying tellurene nanoribbons for practical quantum spin Hall device applications through scalable substrate-agnostic solution processes. This project's research objectives are to (i) establish the solution manufacturing capability for producing two-dimensional tellurene nanoribbons and tellurides with controlled properties, (ii) develop a physics-based, data-driven theoretical framework for guiding and understanding the experiments, and (iii) characterize the materials and devices to identify the process-structure-property-performance relations. The scalable solution process employs in-situ and ex-situ characterization combined with theoretical exploration to understand the chemical pathways critical to engineering the nucleation and growth of tellurene nanoribbons with tailored properties for quantum device manufacturing.

Presenting Author: Wenzhuo Wu Purdue University

Presenting Author Biography: Dr. Wenzhuo Wu is the Ravi and Eleanor Talwar Rising Star Associate Professor in the School of Industrial Engineering at Purdue University. He received his Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology in Materials Science and Engineering. Dr. Wu’s research interests include designing, manufacturing, and integrating nanomaterials for applications in wearable sensors, clean energy, and nanoelectronics. He was a recipient of many awards, e.g., Oak Ridge Associated Universities Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award, Society of Manufacturing Engineers Barbara M. Fossum Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award, Advanced Materials Interfaces Hall of Fame , ARO Young Investigator Award, NSF Early CAREER Award, Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS) Functional Materials Division (FMD) Young Leaders Professional Development Award, Purdue College of Engineering Faculty Excellence Award for Early Career Research, Advanced Materials Technologies Hall of Fame, an invited participant at the 2022 China-America Frontiers of Engineering Symposium, an invited participant in the first U.S.-Africa Frontiers of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Symposium, an invited participant in the Arab-American Frontiers of Science, Engineering, and Medicine symposium, Sensors Young Investigator Award, an elected Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), and an elected Fellow of Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).

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