Tuesday 18 February 2025
Strain engineering​ and straintronics​
Andrés Castellanos-Gómez (Madrid)

Strain engineering is an effective approach to tune the electronic properties of materials by applying mechanical deformation to their lattice. Conventional straining methods for 3D materials, such as epitaxial growth on substrates with lattice mismatch, dielectric capping layers, or heavy ion implantation, typically allow for strains of less than 2% due to the limited mechanical flexibility of brittle semiconducting materials. For example, bulk silicon can only be strained up to 1.5% before breaking. Additionally, these approaches result in static deformations, making them unsuitable for creating tunable devices. In contrast, 2D materials can be stretched, folded, bent, or even pierced, exhibiting remarkable stretchability and allowing for dynamically adjustable strain. This flexibility opens the door to “straintronic” devices—optoelectronic devices whose electronic and optical properties can be engineered through mechanical deformations. In this presentation, I will discuss our recent work on strain engineering in 2D materials and the development of strain-tunable optoelectronic devices.