THERE ARE OPEN CALLS FOR a PhD POSITION IN THE LAB NOW: (1) The DOC-FAM COFUND Doctoral Program (Deadline 30th November) and (2) The INPhINIT “la Caixa” Fellowship Program (open until February 1, 2018).

THERE ARE OPEN CALLS FOR a PhD POSITION IN THE LAB NOW:

(1) The DOC-FAM COFUND Doctoral Program (Deadline 30th November) and

(2) The INPhINIT “la Caixa” Fellowship Program (open until February 1, 2018).

See in the following the details:

(1) The DOC-FAM COFUND doctoral program @ ICMAB opens on October 1st. The deadline for submission is 30th november. Salary and benefits. The successful candidate will receive a scholarship for 3 years (gross salary 33,600€/year) and generous funding for research, training and networking costs. He/she will benefit from extensive and dedicated training programme including secondments in private companies, workshops, schools and training in non-research oriented skills. All details about job conditions and submission deadlines can be found here.

Brief description of my research project in the DOC-FAM COFUND Doctoral Program:

Plasmonics in Multifunctional Nanophotonic Circuits

When light interacts with metals at the nanoscale, free electrons –which resonate collectively at their natural frequency– reemit electromagnetic waves in the form of plasmons. These are evanescent waves, which have the property of squeezing and boosting the energy density into subwavelength regions. Because of these properties, plasmons are used in nanophotonic applications, e.g., biochemical sensing. The present project aims at exploiting plasmons as data carriers along nanoscale circuits, moving into novel unexplored areas. The underlying premise is that plasmon modulation should enable more efficient data routing through optical interconnects in multicore chips. Different strategies will be explored: (i) First, by exploiting plasmon propagation through metal/ferroelectric interfaces, to change the optical properties by electric fields. Secondly, by incorporating magnetism in two ways, viz.: the propagation of plasmons along magnetic metal/ferroelectric interfaces and (ii.2) by exploiting spin-polarized currents generated by spin-pumping in the radiofrequency range (GHz).

The fellow will be supervised by Dr. Gervasi Herranz, research leader in functional oxide interfaces and photonics. Dr. Herranz aims his scientific activity at the research on new materials for electronics and photonics. he/she will access our advanced optical laboratory, which includes optical spectroscopy and high-resolution imaging tools. The fellow will be acquainted with state-of-the art techniques that allow real-space mapping of optical responses with diffraction limitation.

(2) The INPhINIT “la Caixa” Fellowship Program @ ICMAB is open until February 1st 2018.

INPhINIT is promoted by the “la Caixa” Foundation with the aim of supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Spain by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.

INPhINIT recruits per call 57 Early-Stage Researchers of any nationality, who enjoy a 3-year employment contract at the Research Centre of their choice among those selected and awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (“Severo Ochoa” centres of excellence and “Maria de Maeztu” units of excellence) and the Spanish Ministry of Health (“Carlos III centres of excellence”). In addition, researchers establish a personal career development plan including trasnational, intersectoral and interdisciplinary mobility opportunities, and attend a full range of complementary training courses and workshops.

All details about job conditions and submission deadlines can be found here.

Brief description of my research projects in INPhINIT “la Caixa” Fellowship Program:

Low-Loss Multifunctional Plasmonic Metamaterials

Artificial metamaterials (MMs) can exhibit extraordinary electromagnetic responses that transcend the properties of natural materials. The present Project aims at exploiting plasmons in multifunctional MMs for applications in optical communications and light harvesting. One important challenge is associated with overcoming losses that dampen plasmons. One solution is to combine MMs that incorporate metals with reduced carrier concentration by mixing them with nonmetals, e.g., silicides, nitrides or oxide intermetallics. One particularly interesting material is TiN, which has optimum optical properties in the visible and is compatible with CMOS-semiconductor technologies. With this in mind, the successful candidate will synthesize and study the optical properties of multifunctional plasmonic MMs that incorporate low-loss metals, with the objective to achieve highly performant nanophotonic devices. The research on these materials is relevant for technological applications in photovoltaic cells and integrated on-chip communication networks. The student will be supervised by Dr. Gervasi Herranz, research leader in functional oxide interfaces and photonics. Dr. Herranz aims his scientific activity at the research on new materials for electronics and photonics. The main topics and selected publications of the host group are given: (i) Manipulation of the electronic states in quantum wells: Physical Review Letters 109, 226601 (2012), Physical Review Letters 113, 156802 (2014), Nature Communications 3, 1189 (2012); Nature Communications 6, 6028 (2015), Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 106102 2017 (ii) Tailoring optical activity exploiting photonic effects (ACS Nano, 5, 2957(2011), Nanoscale 3, 4811 (2011)), plasmons (Langmuir, 28, 9010 (2012), Physical Review Applied 2, 054003 (2014) or polarons (Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 026401 (2016)).

Dynamical modulation of electron spins with microwaves

At present, most of the digital information is stored in nonvolatile magnetic bits, e.g., in the hard disk drives of PCs and laptops, while data is processed in volatile memory units -e.g., in CPUs-. In order to extend the advantages of nonvolatility to processing units (i.e., adding to them the capability of permanent storage), efficient ways of manipulating the magnetism with electric currents are intensively researched, so that the information encoded in the magnetic bits (viz. with spins in up/down states) can be changed dynamically with electric pulses. In addition, over the past few years, the scientists have realized that some magnetic nanostructures (for instance, Pt/Co stacks) can host topological spin states (e.g. skyrmions), with a vast potential for new applications. With this foreground in view, we propose to modulate the magnetism of magnetic nanodevices using surface acoustic waves controlled by microwave (mw) pulse fields, in the technological relevant range of the GHz, where most telecommunication applications work (e.g., cell phones, RFIDs, Wifi, etc.).

The candidate will be supervised by Dr. Gervasi Herranz, research leader in functional oxide interfaces and photonics. Dr. Herranz aims his scientific activity at the research on new materials for electronics and photonics. The main topics and selected publications of the host group are given: (i) Manipulation of the electronic states in quantum wells: Physical Review Letters 109, 226601 (2012), Scientific Reports 2, 758 (2012), Physical Review Letters 113, 156802 (2014), Nature Communications 3, 1189 (2012); Nature Communications 6, 6028 (2015) (ii) Tailoring optical activity exploiting photonic effects (ACS Nano, 5, 2957(2011), Nanoscale 3, 4811 (2011)), plasmons (Langmuir, 28, 9010 (2012), Physical Review Applied 2, 054003 (2014) or polarons (Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 026401 (2016)).