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Materials science

Synergy in a superlattice

Nature volume 445, pages 492–493 (2007)Cite this article

Put two types of crystal together in one lattice, and the resulting material can have properties greater than the sum of those of its individual components. Until now, that's been a difficult trick to pull off on a large scale.

Many applications in materials science require the preparation of crystalline solids that are essentially perfect, only for impurities to be added back into them to achieve a particular physical property. Microelectronics is the obvious example: pure silicon is the foundation of modern integrated circuits, but only by adding atomic impurities (dopants) into the silicon lattice can it be tuned from being an insulator to a semiconductor to a metal. This is a relatively simple operation, as it requires the optimization of only one property, electrical conductivity. Optimizing multiple, correlated properties is a trickier business, but one that is essential for many applications. Writing in Nature Materials, Urban et al.1 describe progress towards achieving this sort of trade-off — the synergistic combination of two materials' properties in one 'superlattice'.

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Figure 1: Binary diversity.

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  1. Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Mail Code 127-72, 1200 East California Boulevard, Pasadena, 91125, California, USA

    James R. Heath

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  1. James R. Heath
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Heath, J. Synergy in a superlattice. Nature 445, 492–493 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/445492a

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