The Instrumentation for Materials Research (IMR) funding provided to this program will be used to purchase a Micromanipulated Cryogenic Probe Station. This instrument will facilitate temperature-dependent characterization of a variety of materials and devices being fabricated in the Penn State Materials Research Science and Engineering Center for Nanoscale Science including ferroelectric thin films and nanotubes, semiconductor and superconductor nanowires, and metal-molecule-metal junctions. These measurements will provide insight into fundamental materials properties such as domain wall motion in scaled ferroelectric thin films and electrical transport in one-dimensional nanostructures. This system offers advantages over conventional cryostats for these samples because it eliminates potentially damaging device packaging (i.e., dicing, mounting, and wire bonding) steps by incorporating six independently controlled micro-manipulated low-noise probes that are used to contact devices across a large sample diameter. In addition, the ability to probe multiple devices in a single cool down will make it easier to collect data on device-to-device variations, which have proven to be significant in many new nanoscale materials such as those described here. The cryogenic probe system will also have broader educational impact in undergraduate research and laboratory-based coursework. Several new laboratory modules will be incorporated into existing undergraduate and graduate physics and electrical engineering courses to provide instruction on temperature-dependent measurement of physical effects in nanoscale materials and devices.
The Instrumentation for Materials Research (IMR) funding provided to this program will be used to purchase a Micromanipulated Cryogenic Probe Station. This instrument incorporates six independently controlled probes that are used to contact individual on-chip devices, which are maintained at temperatures between 4 and 300 K by a continuous flow liquid helium cryostat. The probe station will facilitate temperature-dependent characterization of a variety of new devices being fabricated in the Penn State Materials Research Science and Engineering Center for Nanoscale Science including ferroelectric thin films and nanotubes, semiconductor and superconductor nanowires, and metal-molecule-metal junctions. These measurements will provide insight into fundamental materials properties such as domain wall motion in scaled ferroelectric thin films and electrical transport in one-dimensional nanostructures. The cryogenic probe system will also have broader educational impact in undergraduate research and laboratory-based coursework. Several new laboratory modules will be incorporated into existing undergraduate and graduate physics and electrical engineering courses to provide instruction on temperature-dependent measurement of physical effects in nanoscale materials and devices.
