Mediaspace scheduled maintenance: Aug 25, 2026 07:00 - 12:00 AM. During this time, videos will be temporarily unavailable. Check status updates.

Lecture

Nanoscale Phenomena: Thin Films Growth and Tunneling Current

In course

MICRO-530: Nanotechnology

This course gives the basics for understanding nanotechnology from an engineer's perspective: physical background, materials aspects and scaling laws, fabrication and imaging of nanoscale devices. ...

Description

This lecture covers the concept of magic numbers in nanoparticles, where specific atom counts determine stability. It also discusses the growth of thin films on substrates, including layer-by-layer and island growth mechanisms. Furthermore, it explores the Pyramid-to-Dome transformation in Ge/Si(001) clusters and provides an overview of tunneling current, explaining the transmission of wavefunctions through barriers and its dependence on energy, height, and width. The lecture delves into the tunneling current in Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM) setups, emphasizing elastic tunneling and the relationship between filled and empty states energy levels.

This video is available exclusively on Mediaspace for a restricted audience. Please log in to MediaSpace to access it if you have the necessary permissions.

Watch on Mediaspace

Instructors (2)

Giovanni Boero

Jürgen Brugger

I am a Professor of Microengineering and co-affiliated to Materials Science. Before joining EPFL I was at the MESA Research Institute of Nanotechnology at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, and at the Hitachi Central Research Laboratory, in Tokyo, Japan. I received a Master in Physical-Electronics and a PhD degree from Neuchâtel University, Switzerland. Research in my laboratory focuses on various aspects of MEMS and Nanotechnology. My group contributes to the field at the fundamental level as well as in technological development, as demonstrated by the start-ups that spun off from the lab. In our research, key competences are in micro/nanofabrication, additive micro-manufacturing, new materials for MEMS, increasingly for wearable and biomedical applications. Together with my students and colleagues we published over 200 peer-refereed papers and I had the pleasure to supervise over 25 PhD students. Former students and postdocs have been successful in receiving awards and starting their own scientific careers. I am honoured for the appointment in 2016 as Fellow of the IEEE “For contributions to micro and nano manufacturing technology”. In 2017 my lab was awarded an ERC AdvG in the field of advanced micro-manufacturing.

Official source

Related concepts (32)

Scanning tunneling microscope

A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is a type of microscope used for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, then at IBM Zürich, the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986. STM senses the surface by using an extremely sharp conducting tip that can distinguish features smaller than 0.1 nm with a 0.01 nm (10 pm) depth resolution. This means that individual atoms can routinely be imaged and manipulated.

Thin film

A thin film is a layer of material ranging from fractions of a nanometer (monolayer) to several micrometers in thickness. The controlled synthesis of materials as thin films (a process referred to as deposition) is a fundamental step in many applications. A familiar example is the household mirror, which typically has a thin metal coating on the back of a sheet of glass to form a reflective interface. The process of silvering was once commonly used to produce mirrors, while more recently the metal layer is deposited using techniques such as sputtering.

Scanning probe microscopy

Scanning probe microscopy (SPM) is a branch of microscopy that forms images of surfaces using a physical probe that scans the specimen. SPM was founded in 1981, with the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope, an instrument for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. The first successful scanning tunneling microscope experiment was done by Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer. The key to their success was using a feedback loop to regulate gap distance between the sample and the probe.

Atomic force microscopy

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) or scanning force microscopy (SFM) is a very-high-resolution type of scanning probe microscopy (SPM), with demonstrated resolution on the order of fractions of a nanometer, more than 1000 times better than the optical diffraction limit. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is a type of scanning probe microscopy (SPM), with demonstrated resolution on the order of fractions of a nanometer, more than 1000 times better than the optical diffraction limit.

Near-field scanning optical microscope

Near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM) or scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM) is a microscopy technique for nanostructure investigation that breaks the far field resolution limit by exploiting the properties of evanescent waves. In SNOM, the excitation laser light is focused through an aperture with a diameter smaller than the excitation wavelength, resulting in an evanescent field (or near-field) on the far side of the aperture.

Related lectures (46)

Untitled

Atomic Resolution Techniques

Covers synchrotrons, x-ray lasers, and atomic resolution techniques like Cryo-EM and scanning tunneling microscopy.

Physics of Life: AFM

Explores Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) principles, applications, and significance in scientific research, including biological structure studies.

BioNanoArchitectonics: from atoms to medicine

Introduces BioNanoArchitectonics principles, from Particle Physics to smart materials and molecular control at the nanoscale.

Scanning probe microscopy: basics