Seminar of the Department of Condensed Matter Physics: Alejandro V. Silhanek
Seminar of the Department of Condensed Matter Physics: “Electromigration, from pain to gain”- Friday May 24th
On 24 May 2024 a new session of the Seminars of the Department of Condensed Matter Physics of the University of Zaragoza will be held, on this occasion Alejandro V. Silhanek, from the Université de Liège (Belgium), will give the lecture entitled: “Electromigration, from pain to gain”.
Summary of the talk: Electromigration is the displacement of ions in a metal resulting from the momentum transfer between conducting electrons and diffusing atoms. Although already investigated more than 100 years ago, it became a major problem only when the severe conditions necessary for operation of integrated circuits (IC) made it apparent in the late 1960s. Although it remains a major concern the negative perception of electromigration has progressively changed during the last decades. Nowadays, controlled electromigration can be regarded as a very promising tool for modifying the physical properties of micro and nanoscale materials with single atom resolution and with a high degree of flexibility. In this lecture, I will present a comprehensive overview of the evolution of electromigration from a device failure mechanism to a nanofabrication tool.
I will briefly discuss the physical mechanisms and some material aspects, propose a method to efficiently and safely control its rate, and finish with some recent applications to the study of superconducting circuitry. The proposed postprocessing technique of controlled electromigration is particularly appealing in view of its simplicity, robustness and applicability to a large diversity of materials.
Alejandro Silhanek is head of the group Experimental Physics of Nanostructured Materials at the University of Liège, Belgium. He is Professor at the Physics Department since 2011. He has obtained his Ph.D. at the Instituto Balseiro (Bariloche, Argentina) in 2001, followed by two postdoctoral experiences at the KULeuven (Belgium) and Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA). He has more than 200 scientific publications in a large diversity of domains in mesoscopic physics and nanoscience, including magnetism, superconductivity, metamaterials, and quantum transport. More information on our website http://www.mate.ulg.ac.be/
The session will take place at 12:30 pm in the Sala de Grados of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Zaragoza.
The series of Seminars of the Department of Condensed Matter Physics has the collaboration of the Aragon Nanoscience and Materials Institute, INMA, a joint institute of the CSIC and the University of Zaragoza, and the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Zaragoza.
