News : Condensed matter physics, chemistry & nanosciences

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 […] >>

Description of the project: Semiconductor piezoelectric nanowires (NWs) (GaN and ZnO among others) have improved piezoelectric properties compared to thin films and bulk materials, due to their greater flexibility and sensitivity to lower forces. An intrinsic improvement in piezoelectric coefficients has also been identified by recent theoretical and experimental studies [1, 2]. These NWs can […] >>