News : Solid state physics, surfaces and interfaces

Magnetic random access memories (MRAMs) are now on the market, in FPGAs or cache memory blocks. The concept of Perpendicular Shape Anisotropy MRAM (PSA) has been proposed to expand the MRAM market: the usual ultra-thin storage layer being replaced by a vertical magnetic pillar, allowing retention to be maintained at <10nm size and at high […] >>

For their atomic thinness and exceptional electronic properties, 2D materials like graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides (TMD) are promising materials to build new compact and energy efficient electronic and spintronic devices. A key property of those materials is their two dimensional character which makes them highly sensitive to their environment. Thus, it offers the key […] >>

Two-dimensional (2D) materials are defined as crystalline solids consisting of a single layer of atoms, making their properties remarkable. Compared to their massive form, they can present outstanding semiconducting characteristics that can be exploited for many applications (CMOS, memories, photonics, photovoltaics, etc.). However, their integration into components via standard microelectronics processes remains a challenge and […] >>

The Laue microdiffraction instrument (µLaue), installed at the European Synchrotron (ESRF) in Grenoble (BM32 beamline), is unique in Europe and probes the matter by diffracting a polychromatic X-ray beam of a few hundred nanometers. The acquisition of the Laue diffraction diagram is very fast and allows scanning the samples with high precision to get the […] >>

Straining the cristal lattice of a semiconductor is a very powerfull tool enabling controlling many properties such as its emission wavelength, its mobility…Making strain amplification microstructures is a rather recent technique allowing accumulating very significant amounts of strain in a micronic constriction, such as a microbridge (up to 4.9% for Ge [1]), which deeply drives […] >>