ARCNL has secured funding for the Lotus project, which aims to push the boundaries of optical metrology. Postdoc Anchit Srivastava received an ERC grant under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. With the funding, he intends to investigate which physical mechanisms influence the switching of a material from insulator to conductor.
Lotus focuses on transition metal oxides, a class of materials known for their ability to switch between insulating and conducting states at lightning speed. However, this transformation happens too quickly and in pieces of material too small to be fully tracked using conventional optical techniques.
Srivastava, therefore, aims to develop a measurement method capable of capturing the transition in both time and space. To achieve this, he plans to use laser light, employing a technique previously developed to push spatial measurements beyond the diffraction limit. In that Hades project, researchers used two cleverly shaped, ultrashort laser pulses in which one beam suppresses the outer part of the measurement signal, leaving only an extremely small central region. This made it possible to observe details that would normally fall below the optical resolution limit.
A better understanding of the switching mechanisms of transition metal oxides could be valuable for future electronic and memory applications, where these materials are seen as potential building blocks for fast and energy-efficient switches. The project is expected to obtain both fundamental knowledge and measurement instrumentation, which may be used in further miniaturization in the semiconductor industry.
