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INSPIRE Grant Report by PhD Student Thomas Kämpfe - Stanford University, USA
Published on in NEWS
It’s the heart of the Silicon Valley, Stanford University, one of the most prestigious universities in the world, especially in the field of advancing electronics. As a cfaed researcher, I had the chance to spend three months together with the group of Prof. ZX Shen in cooperation with PrimeNano. All this was made possible only by the cfaed INPSIRE Grant I was awarded within the 10/2015 call. My project aimed on resolving conductance variations on the nano-scale in low-dimensional conductors with spatially resolved microwave impedance microscopy (MIM).
Such low-dimensional conductors include carbon nanotubes, charged domain walls in ferroelectrics as well as sheet conductors and organic blend layers. The technique MIM makes it possible to visualize such conductance variations. We were able to show it is feasible to distinguish semiconducting and metallic carbon nanotubes in the final processing stage even after being embedded. Thus, the deposition ratio of semiconducting and metallic carbon nanotubes can be evaluated and improved for analog circuitry, which is investigated in the Carbon Path.
Furthermore, we investigated new resistive switching phenomena by the creation and annihilation of conductive domain walls. First results of the investigation of low-dimensional conductors with MIM will be presented in the up-coming DPG March meeting.
Image captions:
Left: MIM group at Stanford (from left to right: Prof. Yongtao Cui, Scott Johnston, Thomas Kämpfe, Dr. Eric Yue Ma)
Right: HP garage in Professorville, Palo Alto, right outside of Stanford, the “Birthplace of Silicon Valley”
Report by Thomas Kämpfe, PhD student at the Institute of Applied Physics under the supervision of Prof. Lukas M. Eng (Eng group)
