Research activities

My research team is exploring novel active properties in advanced multifunctional materials, including oxides as well as novel electronic-active materials, with the main objective of developing eco-friendly technologies and devices to be used and exploited in electronic circuits made of stable amorphous semiconductors able to serve large area smart flexible and conformable surface electronics.  This is inline with research I pioneered internationally on transparent TFTs proving the capability of unconventional materials (ceramics), to function as true semiconductors. One of the most successful accomplishments includes the first TFT deposited @RT (compatible with the use of low cost substrates, paper, plastics,..) by magnetron sputtering, with the highest field effect mobility ever reported. Following this area we start also to explore the use of MO for other applications like solar cells (UV applications), and we achieve already promising results for heterojunctions based on ZnO/Cu2O fully processed by spray pyrolysis. Besides the area of MO I would like to mention another breakthrough within my career, related to the paper transistor invention.
The schematic depicts the most important landmarks of my career in the last years.
MO semiconductors are not restricted to displays, and can be used in a broad range of applications, from energy to biotechnology, as it can be seen in the set of new European projects where I’m involved. I started this new area of research in 2003, after making with success the first fully transparent TFT at room temperature. This was a landmark not only in my laboratory but also inside the international scientific community. As a result, my laboratory acquired a world-class reputation in advanced oxide semiconductors as well as on paper electronics for high performance electronic applications.

The new paradigm of MO electronics concerns novel technical solutions for the next generation of consumer electronics, realizing integrated systems equipped with ubiquitous functions of information and energy storage, image display and networking, which strongly demands an embeddable transparent array of non-volatile memory connected to a battery. This is the vision of our research team. 

Presentation given at the European Academy of Sciences (November 2016)

The new paradigm of metal oxide based electronics

Keywords
•    Transparent electronics
•    Paper Electronics
•    Thin film transistors
•    Metal oxide semiconductors
•    Thin films
•    Microelectronics
•    Biosensors
•    Nanotechnology