Semiconductors MM SS
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Enzo ANDREANISemiconductors MM SS
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Enzo ANDREANIThesis directors: Shamashis Sengupta (IJCLAB), Miguel Monteverde (LPS)
Title: Quasi-two-dimensional conductors at semiconductor surfaces
In recent years, there has been a great interest for realizing functional materials and devices in
which the electronic properties are guided by the interplay of charge and spin degrees of freedom.
Instances where both superconductivity and magnetic order are present [1] are particularly
interesting for the development of spintronic and quantum devices. The objective of this thesis if to
study the transport properties of quasi-two-dimensional electronic systems at the surfaces of
semiconductors, which display novel properties arising out of the interaction of different types of
electronic degrees of freedom.
There are several open questions about the ground states of doped semiconductors at very low
temperatures. Superconductivity can be induced [2,3] by the doping of light elements at high
concentrations. Magnetic impurities are expected to give rise to novel forms of spin ordering, like
magnetism and Kondo effect [4]. It is thus possible to generate a wide variety of physical
properties by an appropriate choice of dopant elements and their concentrations. We will realize
low dimensional systems by doping surfaces of semiconductors with light elements (e.g. boron)
that lead to superconductivity and heavier elements (e.g. iron, manganese, bismuth etc.) that are
capable of inducing magnetism and spin orbit interactions. Our objective is to explore the nature of
ground states arising out of the interplay of these different types of electronic interactions.
The doping of semiconductor surfaces (upto a thickness of few tens of nanometres) will be carried
out using ion implantation techniques, followed by nanosecond laser annealing to activate the
dopants. Electronic properties at low temperatures will be studied by magnetotransport
measurements. We will also fabricate microscopic devices in field-effect-transistor geometry using
electron beam lithography, to probe the tunability of physical properties with gate-voltage control
of carrier density.
[1] Linder et al., Nature Physics 11, 307 (2015)
[2] Blase et al., Nature Materials 8, 375 (2009)
[3] Bustarret et al., Nature 444, 465 (2006)
[4] Lee, Nature Physics 19, 614 (2023)
