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Recent progress in the materials science of covalent or ionic solids with a wide bandgap (SiC, diamond, GaN, AlN, ZnO, etc.) has lead to a number of surprising developments. In particular, the reproducible control of the electronic properties of these materials by substitutional doping has overcome the conventional barrier between classical semiconductors (such as Si or GaAs) and classical insulators (such as diamond or AlN), and has lead to a number of novel commercial applications of wide band gap semiconductors in high power/ high frequency electronics and in optoelectronics.
A completely new challenge for future interdisciplinary research is the combination of wide band gap semiconductors with organic and biological systems, in order to create novel devices in the field of biosensors and bioelectronics. Here, wide band gap semiconductors offer a number of attractive properties, such as superior thermal, chemical, or mechanical stability, and the possibility to vary the position of the Fermi level over a wide energy range by controlled substitutional doping. In combination with a suitable chemical surface functionalization, this will open up many new opportunities for efficient and controlled electronic charge transfer across novel anorganic /organic interfaces. Potential applications can be envisaged in areas such as energy conversion, biosensing, neurotransistors, or the electronic switching of biological macromolecules.
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nanocrystalline diamond thin films for biosensor
applications,Nature Materials 3, 736.
- Steinhoff et al. (2005). Recording
of cell action potentials with AlGaN/GaN field-effect
transistors, G. , Appl. Phys. Lett. 86, 033901-1-3.
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