About Applied Materials Science

About AMS

At the department of Applied Materials Science (AMS) research is conducted on the deposition, processing and analysis of innovative III-V compound semiconductor devices.
The last decade a large part of the activities at AMS have been dedicated to high-efficiency thin-film photovoltaic (PV) cells and the development of the therefore required Epitaxial Lift-Off (ELO) technology. The worldwide leading position of AMS in this research area is illustrated by the fact that it has obtained several acknowledged world record efficiencies for III-V solar cells. At the AMS department there is also a keen eye for the application of the research results. For this purpose close cooperation is maintained with industrial partners that aim to apply the high-efficiency PV cells in space applications and light concentrator systems. In addition AMS has forwarded three start-up companies in cell analysis, production and applications.

Infrastructure

The AMS department has several clean room facilities with two AIX200 MOVPE reactors for the growth of GaAs and InP based III-V semiconductor structures. There is a photo-lithography laboratory with all the necessary equipment (e-gun deposition equipment, spin coater, mask aligner, RTA etc.) while another part of the clean room is especially dedicated to wet chemical etching studies related to the development of the ELO technology. A large range of characterisation techniques is available at the department (optical microscopy and surface profiling, XRD, PL, Hall, C-V, I-V) or easy accessible within the other departments of IMM (SEM, AFM, ICP-AES, NMR). Furthermore AMS has calibration facilities for dedicated device tests (e.g. I-V, QE, LBIC) under regular as well as concentrated illumination levels (up to 2000 times).