In the past century, engineering advances in semiconductor manufacturing technologies enabled the production of the vacuum tube and the transistor. The Meng group is broadly interested in applying physics and materials science to the next generation of semiconductor manufacturing. Our research focuses on semiconductor crystal growth for optoelectronic device applications and on characterization of materials towards a structure-based understanding of functional properties. There are several central research themes: growth of novel ferroelectric materials, dielectric breakdown and resistive switching, electrochemical methods, and transmission electron microscopy and other structural characterization techniques. The lab focuses on epitaxial growth of thin films, nanowires, and other nanostructures using vapor phase deposition. We are also interested in method development for transmission electron microscopy: including the use of 4D-STEM to perform strain mapping, crystallographic orientation mapping, and differential phase contrast imaging; and the use of in-situ electrical biasing to study polarization domains in ferroelectric materials. Target applications include random-access memory devices for neuromorphic computing hardware and piezoelectric sensors/actuators. In order to bring a manufacturing technology from the lab to the factory, fundamental understanding of scalable materials synthesis and the relationship between material structure and device performance is necessary.

We apply Scanning and Scanning/Transmission Electron Microscope (SEM, S/TEM) methods for imaging and spectroscopy towards structural characterization of materials for wide-ranging applications.