A CNU research team succeeded in developing the world's first high-quality semiconductor nanorods on a metal substrate. Thanks to this breakthrough, the field of application of semiconductor nanostructures is expected to be greatly expanded.

Semiconductor materials are the basis of modern industrial society due to their excellent electrical properties, but due to their stiff properties, they have limitations that are difficult to apply to places requiring flexibility, such as the human body, clothing, and living spaces.

For this reason, despite increasing interest in semiconductor nanostructures, of which structural transformability is high, the degree of development of high-performance nanodevice fabrication technology combined with high-conductivity and flexible substrates remains at an elementary stage due to the constraints of growth technology.
 
The research team of Professor Ryu Sang-wan (Department of Physics) ushered in the breakthrough for this problem by succeeding in growing gallium nitride (GaN) nanorods on a copper substrate that allows for high conductivity as well as heat and electricity by applying a gold catalyst. Growing semiconductor materials on metals has not yet made significant progress, even in global research groups.
 
Professor Ryu's team inserted a graphene barrier x-layer that inhibits diffusion between metals on a copper substrate to maintain stable catalytic conditions for gallium nitride (GaN) growth, and through this, high-quality semiconductor nanorods were able to grow on a metal substrate.

The grown nanorods can be used as materials for manufacturing various high-performance flexible devices, and the research team has also succeeded in applying the developed nanomaterials to piezoelectric generators.

Professor Ryu said, “The fact that it can be applied to a piezoelectric generator that can convert biological vibrations into electricity based on the piezoelectric properties of semiconductors means it can be applied to places that are bent or folded due to the heterojunction structure that maximizes the flexibility and conductivity of the material. We also secured excellent power generation characteristics as a result of the experiment.”