Germanium on flexible metal

What is it about?

Here we demonstrate roll-to-roll growth of high quality Ge thin film on flexible metal foil. Ge wafers are very costly, thick, rigid and brittle. Flexible Ge on inexpensive and light-weight metal foil, on the other hand, are much more cost-effective and can be utilized for flexible electronics applications. This direct and continuous method of growing high quality Ge film on flexible platform can provide an inexpensive pathway for large scale semiconductor processing.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Uniqueness - 1. Unlike conventional Ge thin film growth by batch processing on bulky/costly wafers, we demonstrate Roll-to-roll growth of high quality Ge thin film on inexpensive, light-weight flexible metal foil 2. Roll-to-roll growth will allow scalable large area manufacturing of continuous semiconductor films and devices, resulting in significant cost reduction 3. Ge is widely used as substrate for high efficiency PV. Inexpensive Ge on flexible metal will enable flexible low-cost PV.