Department 2

Overview

The aim of the Department is to improve the basic scientific understanding of design and fabrication of new materials by micro- or nanostructuring. The research capabilities include methods to fabricate nanowires and nanotubes, micro- and macroporous silicon and nanoporous alumina as well as functional oxides. Molecular beam epitaxy, laser deposition and clean room facilities are available. Advanced high resolution and analytical electron optical techniques are indispensable research tools, complemented by the appropriate simulation techniques. We are also renting cleanroom facilities in a nearby Center for Nanostructured Materials, which also houses a focused ion beam machine, a high resolution SEM and a 100 keV electron beam lithography. Our materials research addresses a variety of semiconductors, ferroelectrics, thermoelectrics, polymers, ceramics and composites. Recent examples include experimental and theoretical work on nanowires of silicon and compound semiconductors, functional oxides as well as germanium inclusions in silicon for potential silicon light emitters.

Our collaborative research efforts include a Max Planck Partner Group working at ITT New Delhi in the area of wafer bonding. Two research teams are active within the BMBF-funded research project "SiLi-nano". This joint activity of the Martin Luther University, the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials, and of the MPI is to accelerate the development of photovoltaics and silicon photonics. Moreover, the department is strongly involved in collaborative research activities in a Center of Excellence "Nanostructured Materials" of the Martin Luther University, financed by the State of Saxony-Anhalt.

The BMBF-funded junior research group "Functional 3D-Nanostructures by Atomic Layer Deposition" focuses on novel strategies for the synthesis of nanostructures controlling the mechanical, optical, but also the catalytic properties. In the area of functional oxide nanomaterials, physical processes occuring in ferroelectric and multiferroic nanocapacitors and layers as well as in intrinsically multiferroic single crystals are characterized in detail. The Minerva Research Group "Nanoscale ferroelectric and multiferroic heterostructures", started in 2009, currently studies structural and physical properties of superlattices based on various functional oxides as well as epitaxial thin films and multiferroic nanostructures.

Very sadly, the director Prof. Dr. U. Gösele passed away unexpectedly, on Nov. 8, 2009. From the beginning of February 2010 Prof. Dr. P. Fratzl (Director at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Potsdam) has been acting as director of the department.