Recent Progress in Coatings and Thin-Film Technologies for Semiconductor Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Semiconductor materials and thin-film technologies remain the cornerstone of modern materials science and device engineering, catalyzing breakthroughs in photovoltaics, solid-state lighting, flexible electronics, integrated photonics, and—increasingly—advanced functional coatings. Recent innovations in synthesis, heterostructure design, and scalable processing now enable the atomic-scale tailoring of electronic, optical, thermal, and barrier properties. New coating architectures also impart anti-reflective, self-cleaning, anti-corrosion, and mechanical flexibility functions without compromising semiconductor performance.

This Special Issue, therefore, expands its scope to embrace “coatings-enabled” semiconductors: films and stacks that not only transport charge or emit light, but also protect, tune, or reshape the environment in which the device operates. We invite original research articles, comprehensive reviews, and rapid short communications that advance the frontiers of semiconductor thin films and coatings, including, but not limited to, the following topics:

Advanced synthesis and hybrid integration
• CVD, MBE, ALD, PLD, sputtering, solution-based, ink-jet, roll-to-roll, and aerosol coating routes for crystalline, amorphous, and hybrid semiconductor layers.
• In-line monitoring, machine-learning process control, and Industry 4.0 scaling strategies for coat-to-device manufacturing.

Band-gap and interface engineering
• Compositional grading, strain tuning, and 1D/2D/3D heterostructures for carrier-confinement, hot-carrier extraction, or multi-exciton generation.
• Defect passivation, remote doping, ferroelectric gating, and interfacial self-assembled monolayers that lower contact resistance or suppress non-radiative recombination.

Functional and protective coatings
• Anti-reflection, omnidirectional, and photonic-crystal coatings for light-management in solar cells, LEDs, and photodetectors.
• Transparent conductive oxides, nitrides, carbides, and emerging MXenes/GRANDs as flexible electrodes, diffusion barriers, or encapsulants.
• Self-cleaning, super-hydrophobic, ice-phobic, and anti-corrosion surface treatments that extend the outdoor lifetime of photovoltaic and optoelectronic modules.
• Thermal-management (high-κ or low-κ) coatings, plasmonic heat-spreaders, and radiative-cooling layers for high-power electronics and laser diodes.

Optoelectronic, photonic, and plasmonic phenomena
• Strong light–matter coupling, exciton–polariton condensation, and Fano-resonant metasurfaces integrated with semiconductor thin films.
• Coatings that enhance out-coupling, down-conversion, or directional emission in micro-LEDs, laser diodes, and single-photon sources.

Device architectures and applications
• Thin-film heterojunctions, perovskite/organic tandems, chalcogenide bifacial cells, and flexible perovskite/III-V foils.
• Coated transparent/flexible transistors, memories, sensors, and neuromorphic arrays.
• Photodetectors, image sensors, and integrated photonic circuits on steel, glass, polymer, or textile substrates enabled by conformal semiconductor coatings.

Stability, sustainability, and life-cycle analysis
• Accelerated aging, damp-heat, UV, and ion-migration tests of coated semiconductor stacks.
• Green solvents, recyclable substrates, and end-of-life eco-design for coated devices.

Manuscripts should provide clear advances in either fundamental understanding or practical performance. They should explicitly discuss how the coating or surface modification strategy influences the underlying semiconductor properties or device metrics.

We look forward to your contributions that will help shape the future of semiconductor materials and thin-film technologies.

Dr. Chengqiang Wang
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Coatings is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.