Our group is devoted to studying the properties of two-dimensional materials and their emergent physical and chemical properties. To this end, we employ a combination of advanced experimental techniques, including:
- Low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy (LT-STM/STS)
- Thin-film growth by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) under ultra-high vacuum (UHV) conditions
- Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) measurements conducted at leading synchrotron facilities
Our laboratories host three LT-STM systems operating at 1.2 K and 4.2 K, one of them equipped with a magnetic field up to 3 T, as well as one microscope that operates at room temperature. All systems are equipped with evaporators for in-situ thin-film growth and allow UHV-compatible sample transfer.
In recent years, our research has focused on the following topics:
- Epitaxial growth of graphene and monolayers of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) on different substrates by molecular beam epitaxy, and the study of their resulting crystallographic and electronic properties.
- Chemistry on 2D materials, by exploring the covalent bonding of chemical species to epitaxial graphene and monolayers of TMDs in ultra-high vacuum conditions.
- Strongly Correlated Electron Systems, studied by scanning tunnelling microscopy/spectroscopy. STS maps allow us to visualize quasiparticle scattering and interference of the highly correlated electrons.
- Superconductivity in novel materials and thin films, with particular emphasis on how substrate interactions influence their superconducting properties.
- Topological Surface States, focussing on their atomic-scale structure and coupling to selected substrates to reveal new topological phenomena.
- Excitonic insulators, by mapping the local density of states and visualizing emergent collective phenomena such as charge density waves.
