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The last six months have been rather crazy for Professor Leo van Kouwenhoven (Applied Sciences). Ever since he first reported in late February that he had detected something that resembled the Majorana fermion, an elementary particle that was first predicted in 1937, his telephone has not stopped ringing.

In this Master thesis I report results on a route to find Majorana fermions in indium antimonide nanowires in contact with a superconductor. Theoretically Majorana fermions appear in one-dimensional nanowires with strong spin-orbit coupling, in proximity with a superconductor and an external magnetic field applied parallel to the nanowire. The nanowires are deposited by a deterministic method, in this way the external magnetic field is perfect aligned with the nanowires up to a few degrees. Results we observed are a possible magnetic field tunable pi-junction, measurements of an induced gap in the nanowire and a robust zero-bias peak that persist in both gate and magnetic field scans. This zero-bias peak can be split and recombine with varying the applied magnetic field and the local gate potential.