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Full Name: 
Planar Atomic and Molecular Scale technology
Coordinator: 
Andre Gourdon
Running time: 
2013-10-01 - 2017-09-30

The PAMS project will explore all sci­en­tific and tech­no­log­i­cal aspects of the fab­ri­ca­tion of pla­nar atomic and sub-​molecular scale elec­tronic devices on sur­faces of Si:H, Ge:H, AlN, CaCO3 (cal­cite) and CaF2 with atomic scale pre­ci­sion and reproducibility.

The sub-​nanoscale devices will be made by com­bin­ing ultra-​precise Scan­ning Tun­nel­ing Microscopy (STM) and non-​contact-​Atomic Force Microscopy (NC-​AFM) atomic and mol­e­c­u­lar manip­u­la­tion, includ­ing hydro­gen extrac­tion from pas­si­vated sur­faces, con­trolled local dop­ing and on-​surface chem­i­cal syn­the­sis of mol­e­c­u­lar devices and wires by cou­pling of pre­cur­sors. PAMS will develop new solu­tions to reli­ably address sub-​nanometer scale devices from the human scale by devel­op­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of low-​temperature inter­con­nec­tion and manip­u­la­tion machines com­pris­ing four STM/ ​NC-​AFM heads with sub-​Å pre­ci­sion, allow­ing for con­tact­ing nanopads con­nected to dan­gling bond nanowires, doped sil­i­con nanowires or mol­e­c­u­lar nanowires.

Under­stand­ing and opti­miza­tion of the elec­tronic struc­tures of these nanowires and of the con­tacts between the var­i­ous com­po­nents of the pla­nar device will be one of the cen­tral objec­tives. The atomic and mol­e­c­u­lar devices will include dan­gling bond cir­cuitries, func­tion­al­ized by cou­pling with organic mol­e­cules, and con­trolled by remote alter­ation of mol­e­c­u­lar states by local band bend­ing; alter­na­tively multi-​branch pol­yaro­matic log­i­cal gates will be syn­the­sized and addressed by up to four nanowires.

PAMS will address the novel the­o­ret­i­cal chal­lenges posed by these pla­nar devices. Accord­ingly, new method­olog­i­cal tools will be devel­oped, allow­ing for a mul­ti­scale descrip­tion (using from first-​principles to empir­i­cal force-​fields) of the struc­tural, elec­tronic and trans­port prop­er­ties of such atomic and mol­e­c­u­lar devices, as well as their fab­ri­ca­tion and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion. These new the­o­ret­i­cal tools will ulti­mately per­mit us to opti­mize the design and syn­the­sis of atomic and mol­e­c­u­lar gates.

Key-​words: Pla­nar atomic scale devices and tech­nol­ogy– The­ory and sim­u­la­tion of nano-​devices — Remote address­ing of nano-​devices — On-​surface syn­the­sis — Inter­con­nec­tion machine — Sur­faces of H:Si , H:Ge, AlN, CaCO3