{"id":245846,"date":"2026-10-23T01:53:02","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T06:53:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/sapphire-grown-semiconductor-film-sets-bandgap-record"},"modified":"2026-10-23T01:53:02","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T06:53:02","slug":"sapphire-grown-semiconductor-film-sets-bandgap-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/sapphire-grown-semiconductor-film-sets-bandgap-record","title":{"rendered":"Sapphire-grown semiconductor film sets bandgap record"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Semiconductors with wider bandgaps could pave the way for smaller, more efficient electronics that can handle far higher voltages, but the wider this gap becomes, the harder it is to control how well a material conducts electricity. Now, a team led by Darrell Schlom at Cornell University has shown that adding silicon to thin films of aluminum gallium oxide can keep this control intact at bandgaps wider than any semiconductor before it. Their research has been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11085-3\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in Nature.<\/p>\n<p>In a semiconductor, electrons occupy two distinct ranges of energy. In the lower \u201cvalence band,\u201d they are bound tightly to their atoms and can\u2019t carry a current. If they gain enough energy, however, they can jump into the higher \u201cconduction band,\u201d where they move freely.<\/p>\n<p>A semiconductor\u2019s bandgap describes the energy required for an electron to make this leap and allows semiconductors to be switched between insulating and conducting states. Since wider bandgaps let materials withstand stronger electric fields, wide-bandgap semiconductors like gallium nitride and silicon carbide are already used in everything from fast phone chargers to electric vehicles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Semiconductors with wider bandgaps could pave the way for smaller, more efficient electronics that can handle far higher voltages, but the wider this gap becomes, the harder it is to control how well a material conducts electricity. Now, a team led by Darrell Schlom at Cornell University has shown that adding silicon to thin films [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1512,48,17,1491],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mobile-phones","category-particle-physics","category-sustainability","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245846\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}