Mr. Faizulsalihin Bin Abas, a second-year doctoral student, Graduate School of Science and Engineering (The Nanishi & Araki Lab. for Optoelectronic materials and devices research), received the Best Oral Presentation Award at ISPlasma 2018 / IC-PLANTS 2018 - Meijo University, Nagoya, Japan (March 4-8, 2018).

Read on below for the technical details of Mr Bin Abas’ presentation:

Indium nitride (InN) is a material related closely to gallium nitride (GaN) – the material instrumental in the creation of white light emitting diodes (LEDs), Blu-ray blue-violet lasers and, of course, blue LEDs for which The Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded in 2014.

Researchers are excited by the potential of InN to be just as useful a material as its relative, and are optimistic that it will lead to developments such as: super-high-frequency / high-speed transistors, as well as solar batteries with conversion efficiencies in excess of 50%. More recently it has also been proposed it may potentially be used as a material for thermoelectric transducers too.

That said, however, the difficulty of producing InN crystals for device applications presents a serious barrier to overcome, as demonstrated by the efforts of Professor Isamu Akasaki (Meijo University), Professor Hiroshi Amano (Nagoya University), and Professor Shuji Nakamura (University of California, USA). ‘High-density threading dislocation’, or the tendency for crystals to develop lattice faults in the growing process, is a major problem, and the reduction of such lattice faults remains the greatest challenge in improving the quality of InN crystals.

In his conference presentation, Mr. Abas reported a new technique for reducing threading dislocation density. Offering the potential for: implementation during the growing process, as well as reduced lattice faults throughout crystals, Mr Abas’ technique opens up the possibility of enhanced production and application of InN.