| Details: |
In the past few decades, progress in crystal growth technology has made it possible to control the dimensions of materials structures with atomic scale precision. There have been many interesting discoveries of new phenomena in the field of low dimensional quantum structures and consequent developments in an effort to achieve solid state devices operating at even higher speeds and consuming lower power, and exhibiting novel capabilities.
In 2001 National Research Council, USA, published a vision document “Physics in a new era: An overview” to elucidate scientific priorities and opportunities and identified six areas of grand challenges. Two among them are (1) developing quantum technologies and (2) creating new materials. Activities in these areas have been growing around the world. Molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) has been an important materials growth technique that has contributed enormously to discoveries of quantum phenomena and technologies.
After presenting an overall perspective, I will give a brief description of our effort in this area of research. We have been growing nanostructures by MBE, mostly via self-organization method, and investigating the growth features and quantum phenomena in them by various in-situ [scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and spectroscopy (STS), reflection high energy electron diffraction (RHEED)] and ex-situ [transmission electron microscopy (TEM)] experimental techniques. We also investigate these systems theoretically, mainly by density functional theory (DFT) calculations. A combined experimental and theoretical approach will be presented. |