University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Superconducting tunneling spectroscopy of low-dimensional materials

Damasco, John Jeffrey

Content Files
DAMASCO-DISSERTATION-2019.pdf

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/104746

Description

Title
Superconducting tunneling spectroscopy of low-dimensional materials
Author(s)
Damasco, John Jeffrey
Issue Date
2019-02-13
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Mason, Nadya
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Abbamonte, Peter
Committee Member(s)
  • Clark, Bryan
  • Faulkner, Thomas
Department of Study
Physics
Discipline
Physics
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Date of Ingest
2019-08-23T19:51:27Z
Keyword(s)
  • Nanofabrication
  • graphene
  • carbon
  • superconductivity
  • tunnel probe
  • tunnel junction
  • InSb
  • III-V
  • semiconductor
  • Fabry-Perot
  • quantized conductance
  • Majorana mode
  • Andreev bound state
  • thin films
  • manganite
  • bismuth
Abstract
Due to technological advances in bottom-up and top-down approaches in device fabrication, scientists have been able to construct devices that have dimensions on the orders of ones or tens of nanometers. Low-dimensional materials are of great interest due to the emergence of quantum effects and increased interactions between electrons, which can be exploited to create novel electronic devices. In this thesis, transport was studied in a variety of one- and two-dimensional materials. In graphene, non-equilibrium tunneling spectroscopy was used to show that phonon-electron interactions was the mechanism to cool electrons. For InSb nanowires, a method of fabricating clean, ordered metallic contacts was found and was extended to create superconducting tunnel probes for the purpose of performing superconducting tunneling spectroscopy. Non-equilibrium tunneling spectroscopy to demonstrate the quality of the superconducting tunneling probes and further experimentation led to the discovery of ideal fabrication parameters. Nanowires of La2/3Sr1/3MnO3 were measured to observe the domain-dominated physics observed in other similar colossal magnetoresistive materials, which manifests as multi-level noise. One of the first magnetoresistive measurements of ultrathin films of bismuth and bismuth-antimony are also presented, and it is shown that there are transport signatures consistent with the quantum size effect.
Graduation Semester
2019-05
Type of Resource
text
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/104746
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2019 John Jeffrey Damasco

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