Magneto-transport measurement has been proven as one of the most powerful methods in charactering advanced semiconductor materials and devices. The measurement can provide vast information about a material and a device, such as carrier mobility, carrier density, effective mass of electrons and holes, elastic and inelastic scattering lengths, phonon emissions, gate capacitance, layer thicknesses, etc. To establish this important characterization capability in Department of Electrical Engineering at University of Minnesota, we propose to purchase a superconducting magnet system (SMS), which consists of a superconducting magnet of the maximum fields of 9 Tesla and a cryostat of the lowest cooling temperature of 1.5K. Such SMS is not only necessary, but also very crucial to our current vigorous ongoing research program on artificially structured new semiconductor materials and devices for future electronics. Currently, our department has total 10 faculty members in the area of semiconductor materials and devices; and at least five of them have great need of using magneto-transport characterization for their research. With a magnet system requested in the proposal, we will measure the effective mass of electrons and holes in artificially structured crystals grown by MBE; we will study the transport in various new quantum-effect-based semiconductor devices fabricated by MBE and ultra-high resolution e-beam lithography; we will investigate the effect of strain in the artificially structured materials on the transport properties of electrons and holes, and on the performance of semiconductor devices; and we will characterize the delta doped MBE grown films. Undoubtedly, not only the listed research but also many other related research in Department of Electrical Engineering at University of Minnesota can benefit greatly from getting this magnet system.
