Stanford Engineers Revive Old Semiconductor Materials for Infrared Tech

The approach could lead to smaller, sleeker, and less expensive infrared technologies for environmental, medical, and industrial uses.

Mar. 6, 2026 at 5:56am

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Materials engineers at Stanford University have developed a promising approach to using well-studied semiconductor materials, lead selenide and lead tin selenide, to improve infrared light-emitting diodes and sensors. The new diode emits infrared light in a desirable range of longer wavelengths, and the resulting integrated devices are "defect tolerant," meaning they can work even if not built with absolute precision, potentially bringing down the cost of new devices significantly.

Why it matters

Infrared technologies have historically been bulky, expensive, and inelegantly designed, but this new approach could lead to a new generation of modern, cost-competitive, and easily manufacturable infrared devices for environmental monitoring, industrial and medical processes, and non-invasive temperature measurement.

The details

The engineers used a technique called molecular beam epitaxy to build the complex crystals layer-by-layer, atom-by-atom, over the course of five years of painstaking research. The first study describes the integration technique used to combine the old semiconductor materials with other mainstream crystals like gallium arsenide, while the second paper details a method to manipulate the crystal structure to enable modulation and control of infrared light through small temperature adjustments.

  • The two papers represent five years of research using molecular beam epitaxy.
  • The first study was published in the journal Advanced Optical Materials in 2026.
  • The second paper was published in the journal Nano Letters in 2026.

The players

Kunal Mukherjee

An assistant professor of materials science and engineering at the Stanford School of Engineering and the senior author of the research.

Jarod Meyer

A former graduate student in Mukherjee's lab and a co-author of the first study.

Leland Nordin

A former postdoctoral researcher and a co-lead author of the first study.

Pooja Reddy

A graduate student and the lead author of the second paper.

Stanford University

The institution where the materials engineering research was conducted.

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What they’re saying

“We taught an old dog new tricks. The so-called IV-VI materials we're working with - lead selenide and lead tin selenide - are more than a hundred years old. They are among the oldest semiconductors historically recorded. We found a way to integrate them with modern technology to produce a new type of infrared diode and to control the infrared light in important ways.”

— Kunal Mukherjee, Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering

“It took all those years to figure out how to grow these materials properly, one layer of atoms at a time. And that meant keeping a special piece of equipment like the molecular beam epitaxy running the whole time - including some 2 a.m. sprints to the lab because of power outages.”

— Jarod Meyer, Former Graduate Student

“Most research in these structural change-type materials creates shifts between disordered and ordered states of the crystal. To go between two ordered states while staying mated to gallium arsenide is actually the hard part and the selling point of the research.”

— Kunal Mukherjee, Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering

What’s next

The researchers plan to continue exploring ways to further enhance the performance and capabilities of their infrared diode technology, with the goal of bringing it to commercial applications in the near future.

The takeaway

By reviving and integrating old semiconductor materials with modern technology, the Stanford engineers have developed a promising path to smaller, cheaper, and more versatile infrared devices that could have significant impacts on environmental monitoring, medical diagnostics, and industrial processes.