Interdisciplinary Environmental Doctoral Studies "Physical, Chemical and Biophysical Foundations of Modern Materials Science and Engineering " (FCB)
As part of the PhD thesis, the transport properties for charge and spin in silicene-based nanosheets were investigated. Particular attention was paid to the study of the topological insulator phase induced by the embedded spin-orbit interaction
Project title
Interdisciplinary Environmental Doctoral Studies "Physical, Chemical and Biophysical Foundations of Modern Materials Science and Engineering " (FCB)
Name of Beneficiary/Beneficiaries
Faculty of Physics and Applied Computer Science of the AGH University of Science and Technology
Name of programme
Operational Programme Knowledge Education Development
Competition
Interdisciplinary Doctoral Programmes - Interdisciplinary Environmental Doctoral Studies "Physical, Chemical and Biophysical Foundations of Modern Materials Technology and Engineering" (FCB)
Project value
PLN 10,123,883.00 for 75 beneficiaries
Funding value
PLN 134,895.00 per one doctoral student
Project delivery period
From 1.09.2017 until 31.08.2022. (extended to 31.10.2023)
Meet our team
- Bartłomiej Szafran , professor, Ph.D. habilitated, engineer
- Andrzej Koleżyński, professor, Ph.D. habilitated, engineer
- Alina Mreńca-Kolasińska, Ph.D. engineer
View the results of our work
All of Bartłomiej Rzeszotarski's research results have been published in reputable international scientific journals included in the list of scientific journals of the Ministry of Education and Science with a score of 140.
Major publications:
- B. Rzeszotarski, B. Szafran, Phys. Rev. B 98, 075417 (2018)
- B. Rzeszotarski, A. Mreńca-Kolasińska, B. Szafran, Phys. Rev. B 99,
165426 (2019) - B. Rzeszotarski, A. Mreńca-Kolasińska, B. Szafran, Phys. Rev. B 101,
115308 (2020) - B. Rzeszotarski, A. Mreńca-Kolasińska, F. M. Peeters, B. Szafran, Sci.
Rep. 11, 19892 (2021)
Bartłomiej Rzeszotarski is a laureate of the A. Piekara Prize of the Polish Physical Society for the best master thesis in physics, then of the Diamond Grant programme and the Etiuda NCN scholarship holder. He received a PhD scholarship of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education for outstanding young researchers and PhD students. Currently he is employed at the Institute of Physics of the Jagiellonian University as a post-doc in the OPUS project.
Bartłomiej Rzeszotarski jest laureatem nagrody im. A. Piekary Polskiego Towarzystwa Fizycznego za najlepszą pracę magisterską w zakresie fizyki, następnie programu Diamentowy Grant oraz stypendystą Etiuda NCN. Doktorant uzyskał stypendium MNiSW dla wybitnych młodych pracowników i doktorantów. Obecnie jest zatrudniony w Instytucie Fizyki Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego jako post-doc w projekcie OPUS.
What problem is addressed by the project?
As part of the PhD thesis, the transport properties for charge and spin in silicene-based nanosheets were investigated. Particular attention was paid to the study of the topological insulator phase induced by the embedded spin-orbit interaction. The control of the transition from the trivial to the topological transport phase (quantum spin Hall effect) was based on the introduction of an external electric field perpendicular to the structure, which can be realized, among others, by gating the band region. In the theoretical model used, based on the tight-binding Hamiltonian for silicene, the interaction of the external magnetic field with the structure was taken into account. All calculations were performed at atomic resolution.
The PhD student has shown that using the topological transport phase in silicene it is possible to reverse the spin polarised in the plane of the band over a very short distance of a few nanometres, which is very important for the application in new spintronic devices. It is also shown how the spin precession velocity can be easily controlled by the control gate potential (by choosing an appropriate Fermi level) and a design for experimental measurement of spin reversal is proposed.
One of the systems studied was a topological phase state detector, realised in the geometry of the classical Young experiment. The obtained results for Aharonov-Bohm interference in a magnetic field identify mixing of the spin current, which implies a trivial transport state, whereas sharp resonance peaks in the measured conductance betray the binding of the spin-polarised current on the notch region (separation of band channels) indicating the topological phase. It is shown that in this case there is no interference of the electron wave on the quantum equivalent of the double slit.
The final results included in the PhD thesis concerned the determination of the effective Lande factor g* for a point contact geometry realised in silicene. The anisotropic character of g* was demonstrated and the influence of spin-orbital interactions on its values was presented.
Who uses the project results?
Our research has presented a theoretical model of a spin transistor for silicene, which can be used as an element in the field of spintronics and quantum engineering. The systems we designed for topological insulator phase detection and resistive Aharonov-Bohm interference measurement can be used by experimental groups studying topological properties in silicene, as well as other 2D materials with similar characteristics (e.g. germanene, stanene) exhibiting strong Kane-Mele type spin-orbit interactions.