Microwave Detection Group for Thin Film Systems

The research group created for the purpose of implementing the grant consists of team members: from the Institute of Electronics – Microwave Technology and High Frequency Electronics Group and Spin Electronics Group; from the Academic Center for Materials and Nanotechnology: Quantum Effects in Nanostructures and Functional Materials and Nanomagnetism Groups; from the Faculty of Physics and Applied Computer Science, Department of Solid State Physics. The aim of the project is to use van der Waals materials, or more precisely two-dimensional materials, in modern electronic devices in the high-frequency range. After the discovery of two-dimensional materials, such as graphene, with excellent electrical properties, extensive research began focusing on van der Waals materials (i.e. crystalline layered systems held together by weak interlayer interactions), with particular emphasis on application in new electronic devices, such as sensors, transistors and novel logic devices. There are predictions and first experimental reports that two-dimensional materials can also play an important role in spin electronics, for example by 'freezing' the mutual orientation of spin and angular momentum of electrons in 3D topological insulators or the large spin diffusion length in graphene monolayers or in high-frequency electronics as antennas and frequency multipliers. By combining such two-dimensional materials in the form of a heterostructure, it is possible to change the properties of each of them, using the proximity effect. At the same time, the microwave properties of two-dimensional materials, especially magnetic ones, have not been comprehensively studied so far, due to the small surface area of ​​the flakes obtained by exfoliation methods, which, combined with thicknesses in the order of nanometers, is a technological challenge for accurate characterization. There are first works showing the possibility of using two-dimensional materials for microwave systems [Nature 566, 368 (2019)]. Resonant microwave methods are an alternative to traditionally used volume methods due to the possibility of producing waveguides on a micrometer scale, comparable to the size of the flakes.