We have recently installed our Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) system. You can check a time lapse movie of the installation in YouTube (Link).
With our MBE we are growing topological insulators layer by layer. A topological insulator is a new class of material discovered just a few years ago. It has fascinating properties: it behaves as an insulator in its bulk but contains conducting states at its boundaries. In three dimensions, they are a common band insulator with metallic surfaces that are protected by non-trivial topological order of the band structure. In two dimensions, they are characterized by one dimensional edge currents. The charge carriers at the boundary states have their spin locked at a right-angle to their momentum (so called spin-momentum locking), which can find applications in sensors, spin-electronics (spin torque, spin filtering, etc), thermoelectricity, plasmonics, etc.
We are very well equipped for charge transport and magnetotransport experiments from low temperature (10 mK) to room temperature and with fairly large magnetic fields (9 T). We also carry out thermal and radiofrequency experiments (up to 50 GHz). For sample growth, besides the MBE, we own a CVD reactor (for graphene growth) and an atomic layer deposition (ALD) system. We have also a customized atomic force microscope (with Magnetic Force Microscopy capabilities) and an optical microscope dedicated to the transfer of 2D materials and the creation of heterostructures with them.
We are frequent (self-service) users of common facilities: X-ray and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (XPS/ARPES), x-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission and scanning electron microscopy (SEM/TEM), electron-beam lithography, etc.
Below, you can find a gallery with pictures of some of the equipment in our group. More images will be included soon…
