News: Suppliers
25 November 2025
Cornell upgrades lab with MOCVD system for next-gen nitride materials
A laboratory upgrade at Cornell University will help to forge new directions for nitride semiconductors by expanding their capabilities to support technologies such as quantum computers and next-generation radio-frequency and power devices.
The upgrade includes the installation in Duffield Hall of a custom-built, metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) system to engineer nitrides with functionalities such as superconductivity, ferroelectricity and magnetism.
Picture: From left: doctoral students Wenyuan Yan and Yuxuan Deng observe as postdoctoral researcher Isabel Streicher operates a new MOCVD system. Photo courtesy of Charissa King-O'Brien.
“The established family of nitrides do a fantastic job, but now we are at a point where we can move on to other nitrides, like niobium nitride, which is a superconductor,” says Hari Nair, assistant professor of materials science and engineering and principal investigator for the MOCVD system. Co-principal investigators are Debdeep Jena (the David E. Burr Professor) and Huili Grace Xing (the William L. Quackenbush Professor), both in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
These new materials could pave the way for high-coherence microwave qubits, memory and radio-frequency devices, far-ultraviolet (UV)-C LEDs and next-generation quantum communication systems. One promising direction involves replacing the aluminium-aluminium oxide Josephson junctions – core building blocks of quantum computers – with versions that are all epitaxial nitride.
Another breakthrough involves making aluminium nitride ferroelectric by substituting in small amounts of scandium, an approach gaining significant traction in both academia and industry, and one that Nair said will be explored with the new MOCVD system.
Many of these new nitrides have only been produced using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), which is useful for research but difficult to scale for industrial manufacturing. In contrast, MOCVD is already the workhorse for commercial LED and gallium nitride-based power devices.
“Every single LED that’s commercially made uses MOCVD,” notes Nair. “So, if we can develop growth processes for these new nitrides using MOCVD, they’ll be much easier to translate into industry… it’s not just about what we can study in the lab, it’s about how we can scale it.”
Building on recent advances in chemical precursors and high-temperature gas flow control, the Cornell team worked with MOCVD system maker Aixtron to design a one-of-a-kind system capable of handling the unique challenges posed by nitride materials. It is the first such system in the USA specifically configured from the outset for the purpose of growing the new nitrides along with the more established family of nitrides.
Unlike conventional systems, the machine features dual metal-organic delivery channels – one for traditional precursors and another for low-vapor-pressure precursors like scandium and niobium. A triple-plenum showerhead ensures that the traditional precursors and the low-vapor-pressure precursors do not mix until they are injected into the reactor.
The system “gives us the platform to explore, discover and ultimately help drive a new era in materials for electronics, optoelectronics and quantum information systems,” says Nair.
The MOCVD system is expected to serve national priorities, enabling a range of research initiatives funded by the US Department of Defense. The system was made possible through a grant from the US Department of Defense with the advocacy of Kenneth Goretta, retired program manager at the US Air Force Office of Aerospace Research and Development.
Cornell researchers expect that the system will also advance technologies being developed by Soctera, a Cornell-based startup focused on millimeter-wave power amplifiers using high-quality aluminium nitride. The company’s innovations are targeting defense applications, including advanced radar systems, autonomous vehicle communications and satellite networks.
Cornell’s Huili Grace Xing to receive 2025 University Research Award in Technology from SIA and SRC
