King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) researchers have shown how fluid injection of perovskite semiconductors creates microwires to build different optoelectronic devices on a single silicon chip. They have developed a microfluidic pumping technology that can help perovskites be more readily incorporated into silicon-based semiconducting platforms.
The "lab on a chip" designed at KAUST consists of several perovskite-based optoelectronic devices on one silicon chip, embodying a photodetector, transistor, light-emitting diode and a solar cell, for example. Credit: KAUST and Techxplore
Compared to traditional semiconductors, perovskites are soft and unstable. "This makes it difficult to pattern them using standard lithography methods," says materials scientist Iman Roqan at KAUST. The challenge tackled by Roqan and her colleagues was to adapt microfluidic technologies to manipulate solutions carrying perovskites to create semiconducting microscale wires.