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...