bandengineering

Bandengineering is the interdisciplinary practice of designing and modifying the electronic band structure of materials to achieve targeted electrical, optical, and thermal properties. The term is most often encountered in the context of semiconductors, where the arrangement of electron energy bands determines device performance. Bandengineering aims to tailor bandgaps, band offsets, and carrier dynamics by combining materials, crystal structures, and nanoscale geometries.

Core concepts include band structure and bandgap, heterostructures and quantum confinement, strain, alloying, and controlled doping. Techniques frequently employed are adjusting alloy composition (for example, GaAs/AlGaAs or InGaN-based systems), creating quantum wells or superlattices, engineering lattice strain, and using nanostructures to modify density of states. External methods such as electric, magnetic, or optical fields can also tune band properties in some materials.

Applications span microelectronics, optoelectronics, and energy: transistors with higher mobility and reduced power loss, LEDs and lasers with tailored emission wavelengths, solar cells with improved absorption and open-circuit voltage, and thermoelectric devices that optimize carrier transport. The approach supports device integration by using compatible substrates and scalable growth processes such as molecular beam epitaxy, metal-organic chemical vapor deposition, and solution-processed methods for certain materials.

Historically, bandengineering emerged from bandgap engineering work in the 1970s and 1980s, advancing through quantum wells in the 1990s and ongoing pursuit of novel materials such as two-dimensional semiconductors and perovskites. While most common in physics and engineering literature, the term is occasionally used informally in other fields to denote systematic control of spectral properties or 'bands' in a broader sense.