Seminars

When confining photons in semiconductor lattices, it is possible to deeply modify their physical properties. Photons can behave as finite or even infinite mass particles, photons can propagate along edge states without back scattering, photons can become superfluid, photons can behave as interacting particles. These are just a few examples of properties that can be imprinted into fluids of light in semiconductor lattices.  Such manipulation of light present not only potential for applications in photonics, but also great promise for fundamental studies.  One can invent artificial media with exotic physical properties at the single particle level or even more interestingly when interactions are considered.

During the talk, I will illustrate the variety of physical systems we can emulate with fluids of light by presenting a few recent experiments. Perspectives in terms of analog simulation of complex problems will be discussed.

Jacqueline Bloch is an experimental physicist, expert in non-linear and quantum optics in semiconductors. After a PhD on semiconductor quantum wires, she started a research program at CNRS on semiconductor microcavities. She has always been convinced that the physics of quantum fluids of light is particularly rich, in particular when taking full advantage of the technological tools available at the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. Along her carrier, she has explored a variety of physical phenomena, like superfluidity, solitons, flat bands, topology, phase transitions or analog black holes.

Jacqueline Bloch is today Research Director at CNRS, Professeure Chargée de Cours at Ecole Polytechnique and member of the French Academy of Science. She was awarded the 2015 Jean Ricard prize of the French Physical Society, the 2017 CNRS Silver Medal and the 2019 Ampère prize.

lien public: à venir

Seminars

Ferroelectric materials exhibit coupled degrees of freedom and possess a switchable electric polarization coupled to strain, making them good piezoelectrics and enabling numerous devices including non-volatile memories, actuators and sensors. Moreover, novel photovoltaic effects are encountered through the interplay of electric polarization with the materials optical properties. Consequently, the light-induced deformation in ferroelectrics, or photostriction, combining photovoltaic and converse piezoelectric effects, is under investigation in the quest for multifunctional materials.

Recent studies in ferroelectric thin films have reported photo-induced strain in the picosecond time range, thus opening a new route for ultrafast strain engineering and optical actuation in devices. However, the polarization is usually in as-grown state, so its contribution on the photostrictive response is not well understood.

In this presentation, we demonstrate that tuning the ferroelectric polarization allows controlling photo-induced current and ultrafast photo-induced strain in PZT thin films based capacitors. Recent promising results are also showing that light can be used to control the mechanical response of PZT MEMS. These measurements provide fundamental insight into light-matter interaction in ferroelectrics and exciting new avenues for materials functionality engineering.

Fig.: (Left) PZT ferroelectric capacitors measured by time-resolved X-ray diffraction, showing an in situ control of the fast photo-induced expansion or contraction following a UV pulse. (Right) PZT-based MEMS whose mechanical response can be tuned by light.

Il est possible d'accéder directement au séminaire via le lien présent dans l'annonce jointe

Lien public: https://zoom.us/j/95148164142 

Seminars

With the amount of connected objects constantly on a rise, it becomes critical to deal with the associated increase in energy consumption. Their energetic autonomy is today a key worldwide challenge, particularly for electronic systems operating in an environment with restricted, or even absent, electrical grid infrastructure. The miniaturization of the micro-devices for sensing and monitoring results in the reduction of their energy consumption, then opening perspectives for developing new autonomous intelligent systems.

Energy harvesting appears as a promising approach to power wireless micro-devices. Among renewable energies, the mechanical deformations and vibrations, harvested using piezoelectric materials, present the advantages to be ubiquitous and permanently available.

Recently GaN nanowires (NWs) have emerged as systems of interest for developing piezoelectric generators. Thanks to their superior mechanical properties, high sensitivity to applied force and exalted piezoelectric response over conventional 2D films and bulk materials, the NWs present undeniable advantages for significantly enhance the conversion efficiency of the generators.

In this presentation, we demonstrate the high potential of GaN NWs for piezo-generation. Our approach is based on systematic multiscale analyses going from the NW synthesis to the fabrication and testing of generators, passing through the characterization of the piezoelectric properties of unique NWs and the investigation of the piezo-mechanisms in play.

Bio: Dr. Noelle Gogneau received her PhD degree in physics in 2004 from the Grenoble Alpes University, France. After a post-doctoral position at EPFL, Switzerland, she joined the Laboratory for Photonic and Nanostructures (today the C2N) as CNRS researcher in 2006. From 2011, her research activities are centered on the growth of III-N NWs by PA-MBE and their characterization for Nano-Energy applications, with an emphasis on the piezoelectric properties of 1D-nanostructures for the development of a new generation of nano/piezo-generators.

Lien public: https://zoom.us/j/99637733548?pwd=NERpSkcxZVZ2Ui9lUEhvTG1LWXFIUT09

Seminars

The seminar with Sara DUCCI is postponed to a later date.

Generation and manipulation of quantum states of light with AlGaAs chips

The development of miniaturized devices for the generation and manipulation of entangled states of light is one of the key issues on the way towards a broad diffusion of quantum information technologies. Different platforms are currently under study and, among them, semiconductors present a strong case for integrability; in this context, AlGaAs is particularly attractive to monolithically integrate active and passive components thanks to its compliance with electrical injection and to manipulate quantum photonic states via its large electro-optic effect. In this seminar, I will review our main results on the generation of quantum states of light with AlGaAs devices operating at room temperature and telecom wavelength and I will present our recent work on the generation and manipulation of high dimensional quantum frequency states of light opening promising perspectives for quantum simulations and computing.

Sara Ducci is professor at Université de Paris and member of the Laboratory « Matériaux et Phénomènes Quantiques ». She received her PhD in Physics at the University of Florence (Italy) in 2000, with a work on pattern formation in nonlinear optical systems. After a postdoctoral position at Laboratoire Kastler Brossel and a position as temporary assistant professor at Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan, she joined the University Paris Diderot in 2002. Her research focuses on the development of semiconductor sources of quantum states of light operating at room temperature and telecom wavelengths; the work ranges from device development to fundamental quantum optics and applications in quantum information. She has been awarded the Louis Ancel Prize of the French Physical Society in 2016 and she is honorary member of the Institut Universitaire de France.

External visitors should be register beforehand via e-mail at com@c2n.upsaclay.fr

Seminars

The Colloquium with Claudia Felser is postponed to a later date.

Seminars

Abstract: Would you appreciate a tool capable of providing stoichiometry of freshly deposited thin films in just a few minutes?
In a context of growing competition, reducing the cycle time for materials is becoming crucial and requires rapid feedback for process optimization. For such fast feedback purposes, a plasma profiling time-of-flight mass spectrometry (PP-TOFMS) instrument (HORIBA Scientific, France) is now commercially available.
PP-TOFMS is a sputtering-based elemental depth profiling technique combining a pulsed radio-frequency argon plasma source (generating a glow discharge) for sample sputtering and ionization with an orthogonal time-of-flight mass spectrometer. PP-TOFMS produces, in a few minutes, nm-scale depth resolved profiles of all elements (including light ones) of the periodic table, over a wide dynamic range (from 100% down to ppm). A simple ratio of the number of ions detected from a given layer provides a calibration free semi-quantification.
Various data obtained with an instrument installed in the clean room of the CEA-LETI will be presented. We will illustrate how useful PP-TOFMS analysis turned out to be for materials designed for applications like power electronics (III-nitrides), phase change memories (GeSbTe) or magnetic sensors (FeCoB).
A comparison with ToF-SIMS will demonstrate the performance of PP-TOFMS in determining composition, detecting contamination, and measuring doping level.

Bio: Agnès Tempez is PP-TOFMS product manager since 2011 and an application scientist in the Nanoscopy AFM Raman team at HORIBA, France. She holds a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Houston, Texas. She worked as a research scientist at Ionwerks Inc. (Houston) to develop time of flight mass spectrometry instrumentation for materials characterization and MALDI/ion mobility coupling for complex biological samples.

External visitors should be register beforehand via e-mail at com@c2n.upsaclay.fr

Seminars

Spin current generation and magnetization reversal are core technologies to realize not only for a non-volatile memory but also for neuromorphic and probabilistic bit computing [1-3]. Spin-orbit interaction (SOI) becomes a key to efficiently generate spin current by spin Hall effect and an interface effect [4,5], and intensive studies have been conducted in various heavy metals (Pt, W and Ta). However, most studies are based on polycrystal or amorphous structures. High quality heterointerface would be necessary for precise control of spin-orbit-related phenomenon in a metal system.

We focus on epitaxial films for efficient control of spin current and magnetization [6-10]. We also focus on a heterointerface on polycrystal heavy metals as well as oxidation and nitridation of light metal Cu to realize large Rashba SOI [11-15]. We epitaxially grow Pt and a-Ta by employing sputtering method on MgO and Al₂O₃ substrates as shown in Fig. 1 for a-Ta case. We first reveal the spin relaxation mechanism by measuring magnetoconductance at cryogenic temperature. Induced weak antilocalization reveals that D’yakonov-Perel’ spin relaxation mechanism due to Rashba/ Dresselhaus SOIs is dominated in epitaxial Pt and Ta films [6-8]. This becomes contrast to polycrystal film where the impurity scattering governs the spin relaxation. We then investigated the spin-orbit torque and magnetization reversal with ferromagnetic layers [9,10,14,15]. Spin torque efficiency in a-Ta / CoFeB is enhanced from that of amorphous Ta (Fig. 2). Both epitaxial Pt and a-Ta enable the zero-field magnetization switching. I will also discuss about the spin current generation in W/Pt interface and Cu nitride structures for efficient spin orbit torque.

Prof. Makoto Kohda received his Master’s degree in engineering in 2002 and Ph.D degree in engineering in 2005 from Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan. After his PhD degree, he was an assistant professor (2005- 2010) and is an associate professor from 2010 at Department of Materials Science in Tohoku University. His current research interests are spin orbit interaction in semiconductor heterostructure and epitaxial metal films for efficient spin generation/manipulation and towards spin-orbitronics.

External visitors should be register beforehand via e-mail at com@c2n.upsaclay.fr

Seminars

One promising approach for beyond CMOS is the so-called MESO transistor proposed by Intel (for MagnetoElectric-Spin-Orbit), a spin-based non-volatile device in which magnetic information is written by a magnetoelectric element and read out by a spin-orbit element through the inverse spin Hall effect (ISHE) or the inverse Edelstein effect (IEE). The IEE occurs in systems with broken inversion symmetry such as two-dimensional electron gases (2DEG) displaying Rashba spin-orbit coupling and results in more efficient conversion than the ISHE.

In this talk, I will show that the 2DEG that forms at the interface of SrTiO3 (STO) with LaAlO3 or reactive metals such as Al may be exploited to interconvert spin and charge currents with very high efficiencies. By applying a gate voltage, we tune the position of the Fermi level in the complex multi-orbital structure of STO, which results in a strong variation of the conversion amplitude with sign changes. This can be related to the band structure through ARPES experiment and tight-binding calculations. Importantly, a finite spin to charge conversion effect persists at room temperature. In a second part, I will present gate-controlled, all-electrical spin current generation and detection in planar nanodevices free from ferromagnets and only based on a STO 2DEG.

Finally, I will propose a new approach to achieve a non-volatile control of spin-charge interconversion with Rashba 2DEGs based on ferroelectricity rather than ferromagnetism, that may pave the way to an entirely new family of ultralow power spintronics devices.

 Manuel Bibes is a CNRS Research Director at the CNRS/Thales laboratory in Palaiseau, France. After a double PhD degree in France and Spain with a thesis on manganite interfaces (ICMAB Barcelona, 2001) he became a CNRS Researcher in 2003. Bibes has pioneered research lines on multiferroics, ferroelectric tunnel junctions and explored novel routes for the electrical control of magnetism and spin transport in oxide architectures. Bibes is the recipient of the 2013 EU40 Materials Prize of the E-MRS, the 2017 Descartes-Huygens prize, the 2017 Friedrich-Wilhelm Bessel award of the Humboldt Foundation and the laureate of two ERC grants.

Figure caption : Conversion of a spin current injected in the 2DEG at the LaAlO₃/SrTiO₃ interface into a charge current.

External visitors should be register beforehand via e-mail at com@c2n.upsaclay.fr

Seminars

In this presentation, I will give a general introduction to the field of quantum computing.

Quantum computing emerges from the idea that one could exploit the most subtle concepts of quantum mechanics, such as quantum superposition and entanglement, to provide an extraordinary speed-up of computational power.

Recently, these concepts have started to emerge in the laboratories, with the first quantum computing machines being developed using various platforms: superconducting quantum bits, trapped ions, photons, Rydberg atoms, etc.

I will explain the basic working principles of a quantum computer, its figures of merits, and the main scientific and technological challenges that the various approaches are facing to develop a scalable technology.

Pascale Senellart is a senior CNRS researcher at Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. Her team develops building blocks for the optical quantum computer based on semiconductor devices. She is co-founder of the start-up company Quandela. Within University Paris Saclay, she is in charge of coordinating Quantum  Sciences and Technologies.

External visitors should be register beforehand

Seminars

On this a broad topic, I have picked three sets of questions to which I will bring some elements of answer:
How does a wind turbine work? Why do they look the way they do? Can they really extract energy although the blades occupy so little space? Why are they white? Many elements of answer to these questions may be obtained based on simple considerations from aerodynamics. A brief review of their history will be given, emphasizing the timescales of the research and development involved, and the factors that led to the success of the 'Danish concept'.
How much can we forecast wind? It often rains when I plan a picnic: have weather forecasts ever improved? On what timescale is it possible to make forecasts - can anything be said beyond a week? This will be an opportunity to discuss some of the research activities at the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique. One aim is to explore methods providing information (necessarily probabilistic) for renewable energies on timescales from 2 weeks to a season.
Is it worth developing wind energy? What are the motivations? Can it provide a non-negligible part of our electricity supply? Is it really urgent? Some key numbers regarding climate change, green house gas emissions and renewable energies will be recalled, drawing on reports from the IPCC and from the IEA (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and International Energy Agency, respectively). This last part may be followed by a small debate if time allows.

Riwal Plougonven is Professor at Ecole Polytechnique since 2012, in the Mechanics Department. Since 2016 he is deputy director of the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique. His research has evolved into two main domains: the study of dynamical processes in the upper-troposphere and lower-stratosphere using balloon observations, and the forecasting of the atmospheric state for the energy applications.

External visitors should be register beforehand