Meet your defects and stress - Alejandro Lopez Bezanilla (Argonne National Laboratory)

Alejandro Lopez Bezanilla, Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory

abstract:

Understanding the way defects modify materials' properties at the atomic scale is a grand challenge germane to controlling any material suited for electronic applications. Far from representing a drawback in the integration of new materials in electronic devices, imperfections such as structural defects and dopants may lead to novel engineering possibilities. I will describe how structural disorder and various types of chemical modifications in bilayer carbon nanotubes and nanoribbons can widen their small or non-existing electronic band gaps while preserving a good charge mobility. Also, I will show that external stress is able to open a band gap in 2D materials with Dirac cones. Methodologies such as the real-space renormalization and machine learning will be introduced as suitable tools for multiscale modelling.