Achieving high strength and ductility in optoelectronic semiconductor

XB Feng and M Huang and B Duan and LQ Wu and ZT Lu and XG Huang and YX Ding and PC Zhai and GD Li and QJ Zhang, MATERIALS TODAY, 91, 224-231 (2025).

DOI: 10.1016/j.mattod.2025.11.014

The advancement of semiconductor devices intensively requires that inorganic semiconductor components exhibit both high strength and ductility to ensure machinability and reliability without physical damage. However, inorganic semiconductors are often intrinsically brittle and/or lack sufficient strength at room temperature. In this work, optoelectronic semiconducting CdTe nanopillars are found to exhibit an ultimate strength exceeding 4 GPa and an unprecedented compressive strain of 80% without shear or crack formation at ambient temperature, surpassing the performance of state-of-the-art ceramics, semiconductors, and even metals. Full dislocations nucleate at the free surface and dynamically interact with the interlocking of restored high- density stacking faults, enabling strain delocalization and extensive strain hardening. A combined gamma c/(gamma usE) and gamma s/(G|b|) criterion is proposed to prescreen deformable inorganic semiconductors. This work not only provides insights into the metal-like optoelectronic semiconductors with superior strength-ductility synergy, but also establishes a framework that accounts for delocalized strain in screening next-generation inorganic semiconductors suitable for robust and flexible semiconductor devices.

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