One of the challenges of cramming smarter and more powerful electronics into ever-shrinking devices is developing the tools and techniques to analyze the materials that make them up with increasingly intimate precision.
Physicists at Michigan State University have taken a long-awaited step on that front with an approach that combines high-resolution microscopy with ultrafast lasers.
The technique, described in the journal Nature Photonics (“Atomic-scale terahertz time-domain spectroscopy”), enables researchers to spot misfit atoms in semiconductors with unparalleled precision. Semiconductor physics labels these atoms as “defects,” which sounds negative, but they’re usually added to materials on purpose and are critically important to the performance of semiconductors in today’s — and tomorrow’s — devices.
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