Leuven Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Center

From Discovery to Technology

The Leuven Nanocenter brings the research and development activities of the K.U. Leuven in the areas of Nanosciences and Nanotechnology together. The center is formed by groups from different departments and faculties and disposes of the broadest range of materials and tools for Nanosciences and Nanotechnology available in Flanders. Our mission is to strengthen the interdisciplinary research and development activities by implementing around specific themes the complete innovation chain starting from fundamental knowledge and scientific discoveries towards the implementation of practical solutions and complete systems. Read more ...

Events

• 2011 Taiwan Nano, October 5-7 2011, Taipei, Taiwan
• Graphene 2012, April 10-13 2012, Brussels, Belgium
• Workshop on biomaterials and their interactions with biological and model membranes, 19-23 September 2011, Salou, Spain
• Meta 12, International conference on Metamaterials, photonic crystals and plasmonics. 19-22 April 2012, Paris, France
• 1st EOS Topical Meeting on Micro- and Nano-Optoelectronic Systems, December 7-9 2011, Bremen, Germany
• ICMON 2011 : International Conference on Microelectronics, Optoelectronics, and Nanoelectronics\, November 28-30, 2011, Venice, Italy
• Transparent electrode : What else after ITO? State of the art and future prospects, 21 November 2011, Paris, France
• TNT Trends in Nanotechnology, November 21-25, 2011 Tenerife, Spain
• GISAXS 2011. October 10 - October 12, 2011 at DESY Hamburg, Germany
• Metamaterials '2011: The Fifth International Congress on Advanced Electromagnetic Materials in Microwaves and Optics, 10-15 October 2011, Barcelona, Spain
• HAXPES 2011 4th International workshop on Hard XPS, 14-16 September 2011, Hamburg, Germany
• Nano and Giga Challenges in Electronics, Photonics and Renewable Energy, September 12-16 2011, Moscow, Russia
• International Symposium on Advanced Complex Inorganic Nanomaterials, September 11-14 2011, Namur, Belgium

Latest Results

All | Nanomagnetism | Superconductivity and fluxonics | Photonics and Photophysics | Electronics and Semiconductors | Catalysis and Reactors | NEMS and Precision Engineering | Nano-Materials | NanoBioSystems

• Structural and electrical properties of fully strained (In,Ga)As field effect transistors with in situ deposited gate stacks
  Posted by Jean-Pierre Locquet
  Metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors 􏰃MOSFETs􏰂 were fabricated with amorphous Al2O3 and HfO2 / SiOx – Si gate stacks, grown by molecular beam deposition. As and In oxides were observed at the Al2O3/In0.17Ga0.83As interface, whereas no oxides were detected on the Si-passivated In0.17Ga0.83As surface after HfO2 deposition. Traces of As were found in both gate stacks.
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• Adsorption of molecular oxygen on the reconstructed β2(2 × 4)-GaAs(0 0 1) surface: A first-principles study
  Posted by Michel Houssa
  In this work, first-principles modeling techniques are used to investigate the mechanism(s) of adsorption of molecular oxygen on the GaAs(0 0 1)-(2 × 4) surface. The reaction of adsorption was modeled using ab-initio molecular dynamics at constant temperature for two thermal regimes, i.e. 300 K and 680 K, respectively. The resulting adsorbate configurations were relaxed using density functional th
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• First-principles study of the structural and electronic properties of (100)Ge/Ge(M)O2 interfaces (M=Al, La, or Hf)
  Posted by Michel Houssa
  The structural and electronic properties of (100)Ge/Ge(M)O2 interfaces, with M=Al, La, or Hf, are investigated using density functional theory. When a Ge atom is substituted by a Hf atom in the GeOx (suboxide) interfacial layer, a Ge–Hf bond is formed due to the fivefold coordination of Hf in the GeOx matrix. The formation of this bond gives rise to a defect level in the upper part of the Ge energ
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• Ge dangling bonds at the (100)Ge/GeO2 interface and the viscoelastic properties of GeO2
  Posted by Michel Houssa
  The electronic energy band structure of a (100)Ge/GeO2 interface with a Ge3Ge● center (Ge dangling bond) is calculated using density functional theory. The defect level associated with this dangling bond is found to lie near the middle of the Ge band-gap. Consequently, the Ge dangling bond at this interface should be paramagnetic when the Fermi level is near mid-gap, and it should th
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• Paramagnetic point defects in (100)Si/LaAlO3 structures: Nature and stability of the interface
  Posted by Andre Stesmans
  The atomic nature of the interface in (100)Si/LaAlO3 structures with nanometer-thin amorphous LaAlO3 layers of high dielectric constant (K), deposited directly on clean (100)Si by molecular beam deposition at similar to 100 degrees C, was assessed through probing of paramagnetic point defects. On the as-grown samples K-band electron spin resonance indicated the absence of a Si/SiO2-type interface
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• Electronic structure of GeO2-passivated interfaces of (100)Ge with Al2O3 and HfO2
  Posted by Andre Stesmans
  Analysis of internal photoemission and photoconductivity in Ge/thermal germanium oxide/high-dielectric constant oxide (HfO2,Al2O3) structures reveals that the bandgap of the germanium oxide interlayer is significantly lower (4.3 +/- 0.2 eV) than that of stiochiometric GeO2 (5.4-5.9 eV). As a result, the conduction and valence band offsets at the interface appear to be insufficient to block electro
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• P-associated defects in the high-kappa insulators HfO2 and ZrO2 revealed by electron spin resonance
  Posted by Andre Stesmans
  We report on the observation by electron spin resonance of P-related point defects in nanometer-thick HfO2 films on (100)Si after annealing in the range 500-900 degrees C and in ZrO2 powder - two oxides prominent in current high-kappa insulator research. Based on the principal g matrices and hyperfine tensors inferred from consistent X-, K-, and Q-band spectra simulations and comparison with estab
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