Kyoto, Japan -- Imagine you're cooking. You're trying to develop a unique flavor by mixing spices you've never combined before. Predicting how this will turn out could be tricky. You want to create something delicious, but it could end up tasting awful: a waste of time and ingredients.
But what if you had a machine that could tell you exactly how your concoctions will turn out? That's the kind of technology that researchers at Kyoto University have developed for the band gap of semiconductor materials.
New such materials are constantly sought after in the development of new devices and improved performance. The most important factor in determining the properties of semiconductors is the band gap, so accurate predictions are essential.
