The Project
Research quantum transport in nanostructures.
Winner
Igor Gornyi
University of Karlsruhe
Institut fuer Theorie der Kondensierten Materie
Karlsruhe, Germany
www.tkm.physik.uni-karlsruhe.de
An honours physics graduate from the St Petersburg State Technical University in 1995, Russian Igor Gornyi, 32 years old, is a research fellow at A.F.Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute in St Petersburg, Russia, currently on leave as he continues his tenure as a research associate at the Research Center and the University of Karlsruhe, Germany. His scientific area is condensed matter theory; he studies transport properties of low-dimensional systems. He is a frequent speaker at international conferences and workshops; recent presentations have included talks on magnetoresistance and dephasing in two-dimensional electron gas, and on transport of interacting electrons in disordered quantum wires.
Award
€846,152
Project Description
The project is intended to develop a coherent picture of electronic transport in low-dimensional structures involving all the key ingredients: quantum interference, disorder-induced mesoscopic fluctuations, and Coulomb correlations. The emphasis will be put on transport properties of quasi-one-dimensional systems; the localization and strong correlations in two-dimensional systems will be also studied.
The objectives of the project are expected to be particularly relevant to the rapidly growing field of nanotechnology(*), especially in the semiconductors nanoelectronics, and in nanotube-based molecular electronics.
The research programme consists of two basic pa
- Study of transport in disordered quantum wires: mesoscopic fluctuations, charging effects in the presence of strong electron-electron correlations; Coulomb drag between quantum wires.
- Investigation of dephasing and finite temperature conductivity due to electron-electron interaction in the localized regime.
The first part primarily addresses the question having possible applications in nanotechnology. The second part is intended to solve the long-standing fundamental theoretical problem of the conduction mechanism in insulators with electron-electron interaction.
(*) Definition - Nanotechnology:
Nanotechnology comprises technological developments on the nanometer scale, usually 0.1 to 100 nm. (One nanometer equals one thousandth of a micrometer or one millionth of a millimeter.) Nanotechnology includes the many techniques used to create structures at a size scale below 100 nm, including those used for fabrication of nanotubes and nanowires, and those used in semiconductor fabrication. Nanotechnology is already having a considerable impact on the field of electronics, where the drive towards miniaturization continues. Some see further development of nanotechnology outside the semiconductor roadmap, and the hoped-for advent of molecular nanotechnology, as the next logical steps for continued advances in computer architecture, while others are less sanguine. (Source: Wikipedia)
