Research @ INPAC

The main INPAC objective is to investigate systematically the effect of nanostructuring and nanoscale confinement of charge, spin and photon on the electrical, magnetic optical and chemical properties of inorganic, organic and bio-materials in order to reveal the fundamental relation between quantized confined states and physical and chemical properties of these materials. Different nanostructured materials will be designed, fabricated and studied in order to achieve this objective.

All nanostructured materials to be studied can be introduced in the following way: starting from simpler nanoobjects (nanocells) via interacting clusters of nanoobjects to their more complicated huge arrays. We will investigate the physical properties of the nanosystems mostly built up from the following nanocells: molecules, clusters, lithographically defined nanoobjects. Moving here from "elementary" nanoobjects to their arrays is, in a way, a methodology based on the principle from "simple" to "complicated". Self-assembly will be used, together with modern lithographic techniques, to fabricate regular arrays of nanoobjects covering macroscopically large areas. Carbon nanostructures will also provide a link with self-organized organic and biological systems. Self-assembly is an efficient parallel processing technique, which is very fast and cheap. It works in parallel over huge ensembles of nanocells, while the e-beam lithography sequential operational principle is from "pixel to pixel". However, self-assembly albeit a fast parallel process, is rather difficult to control. In contrast to that, the e-beam lithography is a fully controlled technique although it is very slow. It is clear that the combination of these two complimentary powerful techniques is needed to enable the preparation of the samples needed for this reseach programme.

The subdivision of the planned research in INPAC is based on the optimal use of the available equipment, expertise and know-how of the participating groups (see Table I below representing the relation between the nanosystems and their properties to be studied and the research to be carried out by each group). The following main classes of the nanostructured materials will be investigated in the framework of this research proposal:

Nanosuperconductors (WP1)

Nanomagnets (WP2)

Superconductor/Ferromagnet hybrid nanosystems (WP3)

Carbon nanosystems (WP4)

Silicon nanosystems (WP5)

Materials for nanophotonics (WP6)

Molecular and supermolecular nanostructures (WP7)

For each class, depending on the type of the confined entities (charge, spin, photon), electrical, magnetic and optical properties will be studied by nanoprobe techniques combined with conventional integrated response techniques. The variation of these properties will be investigated in relation to the nanocell size and its structural and morphological changes imposed through nanostructuring. Interplay between different confined entities will also be studied; here we consider such new effects as induced magneto-chirality (spin + photon), electro-luminescence (charge + photon), coexistence of superconductivity and magnetism (charge + spin).