Month: November 2021

Posted on 2021-11-302021-11-30 by Salvatore Teresi

Everyday life in Grenoble

My PhD started incredibly well! I had the luck of finding such a wonderful group of people always available for help and suggestions.
I enjoyed a lot of time with them also outside the laboratory. It is common to organise something all together and Grenoble is famous for having beautiful mountains all around and a lot of people enjoying hiking. For this reason, only few days after I joined the group, we went all together to Le Col Vert.

Here we had lunch surrounded by nature and with a beatiful view of Grenoble’s surroundings.

About the everyday time on the lab: at the moment I am checking through the ST FMR technique to evaluate the charge to spin conversion of a topological insulator at different temperatures. The idea is to extract the efficiency of the conversion from the measurements, but this step is not straightforward. Everything is working well only thanks to the experienced members of my team, that they do not hesitate in helping and discussing the results.
I spent also a lot of time in cleanroom to prepare the samples through depositions and etching.
I am really happy in spending my time at work, since I am learning a lot of things and the experience is exciting everyday.

Posted on 2021-11-232021-11-26 by Nazareno Sacchi

Systems acting like the brain…

Two months have passed since the beginning of the research on using spintronics for ML hardware. Transfering a technology to an application regarding an already extremely complex system relying on an established industry is no joke, but here in IMEC the team is made up of people working at all levels of abstraction in conceiving electronic systems, and I learn a lot from the software as well as the hardware side to design Machine Learning algorithms. Learning as fast as possible is the key of my research at the moment. In the attempt of emulating the human brain with machines, lots of questions arise.

IMEC Tower. In my department most of the time is spent on designing and conceiving new circuits and architectures.

Indeed, the line of research in electronics has always been toward linearity, absence of noise and lowering the entropy of the system, giving us a sense of order which has brought us very far. However, the brain is still orders of magnitude better and more efficient than even the most advanced supercomputer, and we just know very little about it. This requires an effort to be more creative than ever.

On the other side, Leuven is a lovely, young city, full of events and parties in every corner of the city. I especially enjoy playing sports here as well as tasting one of the thousands of beer brands available in Belgium. The middle age gothic architecture is outstanding and it naturally reminds me of the stories of knights and people of the Western Europe, centuries ago.

Posted on 2021-11-032021-11-04 by Niklas Kercher

Getting connected

In the last two weeks, thanks to an early part secondment, I had the opportunity to get to know many different preparation and exfoliation possibilities at CIC nanoGUNE. Besides the many scientific experiences, I came into contact with many friendly and helpful scientists and was able to enjoy the time there, also because of the good weather. Besides Marco, who works with me in Zurich, I also got to know two other ESRs personally here, Mayank and Eoin. Fortunately, my time in San Sebastián/Donostia coincided exactly with a statistically significant accumulation of birthdays, so I got to enjoy freshly baked cake at work surprisingly often.

The view over one of the beaches of San Sebastián/Donostia towards the city center.

I spent most of my time at the glove box exfoliating various non-stable materials and building stacks with the stamping system. In the picture you can see the transfer process, where the flakes are transferred to a substrate using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). With this technique, precisely aligned complex hetero structures can be produced successively.

Stamping process mid stamping. The exfoliated flakes are on the PDMS which is on the bottom side of the glass slide.

Back in Zurich, I will continue the exfoliation of van-der-Waals crystals of different materials. The new knowledge I gained at CIC nanoGUNE and especially the personal tips on the exfoliation for specific materials will help me to fabricate different types of samples in the near future, either in a controlled environment or under ambient conditions.

Finally, I can only thank you for the wonderful time and send my greetings to Spain.