This event will be in-person and on Zoom.

Suraj Cheema, University of California, Berkeley

Electronic Metamaterials for Energy-Efficient and Energy-Autonomous Electronics

The explosion in energy consumption from microelectronics – due to the increasing reliance on Internet of Things devices, Artificial Intelligence, and Data Centers – is projected to exceed 20% of worldwide electricity production by 2030 and its current exponential growth would exceed global energy production by 2050 if left unchecked. These era-defining energy challenges not only require physical breakthroughs which drastically reduce the energy cost of information processing, i.e. energy-efficient computing hardware, but also demand synergistic design of computing and energy platforms, i.e. energy-autonomous electronic microsystems. In this seminar, I will introduce electronic metamaterials as a new materials platform towards this goal of energy-efficient and energy-autonomous electronics, in which novel negative electronic phenomena are engineered in atomically thin materials and lead to unprecedented charge responses beyond what is possible in traditional materials. First, I will elucidate the microscopic origins underlying negative phenomena in electronic metamaterials, namely competing ferroelectric-antiferroelectric ground states designed in atomic-scale dielectric heterostructures, which then stabilize negative permittivity and negative piezoelectric behavior. Second, I will establish negative permittivity and piezoelectricity as new paradigms for (i) ultra-low power computing (beyond conventional high-permittivity transistors), (ii) ultra-scaled nonvolatile memory (beyond conventional resistive switching), and (iii) ultra-fast energy storage (beyond conventional electrochemical supercapacitors), all designed in HfO2-ZrO2 thin films (the conventional dielectric in today’s microelectronics) towards realizing energy-efficient and energy-autonomous electronics. In closing, I will briefly discuss how this versatile electronic metamaterial platform can exploit different electronic building blocks in emerging atomically engineered materials to spawn new directions in energy-efficient and energy-autonomous research.

ZOOM INFO: https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/84217234934?pwd=Nk4ya1NLaWVMUVJLMEllcHJzQmRkdz09