Mind Over Matter Johnson Matthey Scientists Craft Metallic Crystals That Could Pave Way For New Consumer Products

Suppose, back before there were grapes, somebody thought up a grape.

“Wouldn’t it be neat,” they would think, “if we had something that was about this size and this shape and this color and you could make wine from it?”

But how do you get from concept to actual grape?

Well, if there were potential military applications, the government would be interested. And in the enlightened post-Cold War era, the government would seek to involve the resources of private industry in solving the problem.

“We call this a grape,” they would say to you, a captain of industry, and give you some specifications and theoretical schematics and computer printouts, “and if you can figure out how to make them, we’ll buy them from you. And you can also sell them commercially and make a whole bunch of money.”

But where would you start?

A seed would help.

Unfortunately, this is a seedless grape.

Well, that’s the same problem Johnson Matthey Electronics (JME) faces with an exotic metal compound called indium gallium antimonide crystals containing a 20 percent concentration of indium antimonide.

The government wants them, and any number of other folks would gladly pay JME scads of money for them. Scientists say they could do marvelous things with them.

But this critter doesn’t exist.

If JME’s Robert Smyth had an indium gallium antimonide seed, he could grow an indium gallium antimonide crystal. Likewise, if he had an indium gallium antimonide crystal, he could harvest an indium gallium antimonide seed.

He has neither.

“This,” says Smyth, “is the classic case of the chicken or the egg.”

The company that can produce an efficient thermophotovoltaic cell will find a waiting market worth $60 million to $80 million a year, says Duane Fletcher, manager of business development programs for JME.

The company that perfects an efficient blue light laser will be embraced by an eager $2 billion market, adds Fletcher.

And the theoretical keys to unlock those technologies are the crystals that Smyth and his JME cohorts are trying to create through what they call the company’s ternary materials program.

Under a federal contract, JME is the lead agency in a consortium of six major companies trying to develop the materials and technology, and the resulting products that technology will make possible.

“Ultimately,” says Fletcher, “our mandate is to become a viable supplier of these materials to the government.”

But that’s not where the real payoff for JME will be.

The commercial market for devices based on these crystals is vast, and if it can succeed, Fletcher says, JME will become the world’s principal supplier of those crystals.

Based in Spokane, Johnson Matthey Electronics is a division of London-based Johnson Matthey Plc, a 175-year-old British company that built a worldwide empire on precious metals trading.

Only a few years ago, the company’s electronics division was a tiny part of the Johnson Matthey whole, a relatively small player in the global semiconductor industry.

But during the past five years, JME has succeeded spectacularly in becoming one of the world’s major suppliers of semiconductor materials.

Revenue for the electronics division will exceed $600 million this year, up from only $5 million in 1992.

JME wants to continue that growth by securing its place in developing the next generation of semiconductors, which will be based on photonics - light and lasers - rather than electronics.

Semiconductors are the electronic components that drive computers. They consist of tiny silicon wafers coated with extremely thin layers of highly purified precious metals.

Photonic semiconductors could represent a huge step in speed and efficiency over electronic semiconductors as computers are asked to deal with more complex applications.

A few years ago, JME began building its foundation for the photonic semiconductor future.

The company won an $8.7 million federal contract to grow crystals of rare metal alloys. Just as silicon is the foundation of electronic semiconductors, these crystals, when sliced into tiny wafers, provide the foundation for photonic semiconductors.

In that program, JME established a process to increase the size of the crystals needed to make semiconductors for infrared video cameras. The bigger crystals reduce the cost of the infrared technology, not only saving the government money, but making the technology commercially viable as well.

If they can be made cheaply enough, infrared video systems could be routinely installed in planes and automobiles, enabling pilots and drivers to see through fog, rain and darkness.

The current project is more difficult, though. In the infrared project, the JME metallurgists were asked to improve on something that already existed.

In the ternary program, they are being asked to create a substance that does not exist.

While the applications of semiconductors based on these crystals are broad, JME is concentrating on three areas: blue light lasers, something called vertical cavity surface emitting lasers, and thermophotovoltaics

Blue light lasers make it possible to increase the amount of data stored on a compact disc from four to 24 times. Vertical cavity surface emitting lasers allow the application of photonic semiconductors in computers. Photovoltaic cells convert sunlight to electric energy, but thermophotovoltaic cells convert both heat and light to electrical energy.

All of these devices can be made now. But under the constraints of existing technology, they don’t work very well. Blue light lasers, for example, burn out after about an hour of operation.

Scientists theorize, though, that if someone can grow crystals of exotic three-metal alloys, optic semiconductors could be built that make each of these devices practical.

All Johnson Matthey has to do to fulfill its part of the bargain is grow those crystals.

That’s where Smyth, production manager of JME’s ternary materials program, comes in.

The program has operations in Spokane and at Crystar Research, another Johnson Matthey company located in Victoria, British Columbia.

In Spokane, Smyth and about 30 other employees struggle with the formidable metallurgical challenge of combining indium, gallium and antimony into an alloy from which a single crystal can be grown.

The laboratories are located in the company’s headquarters building in the Spokane Valley.

The rooms where the research is conducted include arrays of computers, computerized microscopes and exotic ovens used in the crystalgrowing process. The sliced crystals are polished in carefully maintained clean rooms in which anyone entering must be clothed head to toe in white suits to keep even the smallest specks of dust at bay.

Growing crystals from pure elements is simple, Smyth says. A seed, or small, precisely shaped piece of the element, is put through a process and the result is a crystal that mimics the molecular makeup and properties of the element.

In a few cases, two-metal compounds will combine to behave as a pure element. A small seed of the compound will produce a compound crystal that is a precise molecular replica of the seed.

Both gallium and antimony and indium and antimony will combine this way. So it’s no sweat to grow an indium antimonide crystal or a gallium antimonide crystal.

The tough part is trying to combine all three of those elements.

When indium antimonide and gallium antimonide are combined, the product is a metallic slush that is “a metallurgist’s nightmare,” Smyth says, rather than the seed they need.

But, in what is a metallurgist’s version of wheedling and cajoling, Smyth’s team has introduced small amounts of indium antimonide to gallium antimonide, and kept the whole thing solid.

They have raised the percentage of indium antimonide in the mix from about 2 percent at the outset to 14 percent now.

But the properties of the metal change with the percentage of indium antimonide, and in order to make an efficient thermophotovoltaic cell, scientists say they need a 20 percent concentration.

Once you get to 20 percent, though, you’ve only solved half the problem, Smyth says. You will have your seed, but unlike a pure element crystal, the crystal grown from this seed will not maintain a consistent molecular structure. The percentage of indium antimony will decrease as the crystal grows.

“So then we’ll have to come up with the tricks needed to solve that problem,” Smyth says.

The ultimate goal will be to reduce the whole thing to an assembly-line process that will produce these now non-existent crystals in commercial quantity.

Smyth estimates that the JME effort is about halfway to the solution of making the correct crystal. But commercial application of the crystals is probably several years away.

“I can see a number of problems downstream,” Smyth says, “but I don’t see anything at this point that is going to be insurmountable. A lot of techniques in growing crystals have been developed that we can make use of.

“It’s just a matter of finding the right series of tricks and putting it all together.”

Fletcher is confident that Johnson Matthey can crack the case, as well. But his evaluation of the process reflects a little more awe than does Smyth’s more casual confidence.

“What we are doing here,” he says, “is revolutionizing existing materials technology.”

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