Cubic Boron Arsenide Becomes Possibly the Best Semiconductor to Date

On July 21, 2022, Researcher Liu Xinfeng’s team at the National Center for Nanoscience, together with Professors Bao Jiming and Ren Zhifeng at the University of Houston, and Professor Gang Chen’s team at MIT collaborating with Ren Zhifeng, published major breakthroughs on cubic boron arsenide (c-BAs) semiconductor materials in Science: experimental evidence showed that cubic boron arsenide can simultaneously exhibit high electron and hole mobilities as well as excellent thermal conductivity.

Earlier theoretical work suggested that c-BAs could have hole mobility more than three times that of commonly used silicon, and thermal conductivity potentially near ten times higher—making it possibly the best semiconductor discovered so far. Both studies grew relatively high-quality c-BAs single crystals and used different spectroscopic techniques to confirm the predicted superior properties. However, the crystals used still contain defects, so achieving semiconductor-grade purity to replace silicon remains a long road.

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