Length control of individual carbon nanotubes by nanostructuring with a scanning tunneling microscope

Spatially resolved spectroscopy on carbon nanotubes

Carbon nanotubes are small cylindrical molecules with a typical diameter of 1 nm and lengths of up to micrometers. These intriguing molecules exhibit, depending on the exact atomic structure, either semiconducting or metallic behavior. This makes them ideal candidates for possible future molecular electronics. In this thesis Janssen describes...

Electronic instabilities and structural fluctuations in self-assembled atom wires

One-dimensional (1D) solid state systems can behave drastically different from their higher dimensional counterparts. Increased interactions can produce electronic and/or structural instabilities. In this respect, the following fundamental questions are important for a proper understanding of the properties of the ultimate 1D systems consisting...

Magnetic adatoms as building blocks for quantum magnetism

Physics at the level of an atom is dominated by laws of quantum mechanics. Often, this is entangled with a high complexity in behavior of the systems at that length scale. Unravelling the properties of a material at the atomic level is, therefore, a challenging task that easily supersedes current computational capabilities. A route to circumvent...

Nanofabricated tips for device-based scanning tunneling microscopy

We report on the fabrication and performance of a new kind of tip for scanning tunneling microscopy. By fully incorporating a metallic tip on a silicon chip using modern micromachining and nanofabrication techniques, we realize so-called smart tips and show the possibility of device-based STM tips. Contrary to conventional etched metal wire...

Experimental Determination of a Single Atom Ground State Orbital through Hyperfine Anisotropy

Historically, electron spin resonance (ESR) has provided excellent insight into the electronic, magnetic, and chemical structure of samples hosting spin centers. In particular, the hyperfine interaction between the electron and the nuclear spins yields valuable structural information about these centers. In recent years, the combination of...