Spectroscopic Imaging Ellipsometry at Cryogenic Temperatures Applied to Atomically Thin Crystals
SPEAKERS
  • Ursula Wurstbauer
    Institute of Physics and Center for Soft Nanoscience (SoN), University of Münster, Germany
Authors
Ursula Wurstbauer

Two-dimensional (2D) materials are atomically thin crystalline layers with physical properties that dependent on the layer number. So far various families of two-dimensional materials have been realized with many materials being environmental (rather) stable and can be combined in hetero-stacks in nearly any fashion with rotational degree of freedom. Spectroscopic imaging ellipsometry is established as a powerful tool to identify and characterize such structures, to investigate interfacial properties and to study the peculiar light-matter interaction in those ultrathin systems down to the monolayer limit [1-5].


The study of two-dimensional quantum materials and the investigation of ultrathin films for quantum-technological application under in-operando conditions requires cryogenic temperatures down to the sub-Kelvin regime [6]. We combine Spectroscopic Imaging Ellipsometry (SIE), which offers the capability of an ellipsometer with the lateral resolution of a microscope with a closed-cycle cryostat with an ADR cooling stage with free beam optical access allowing SIE measurements from room-temperature down to <800mK. In this way, we explore the temperature-dependence of the local dielectric function of 2D polar gallium, a novel two-dimensional material with a superconducting phase transition at around 4.5K and strong plasmonic response and epsilon-near zero behavior [7,8]. We show a change in the local dielectric response of the material from a homogenous behavior at room temperature to a heterogenous regime at low temperatures that is interpreted as a structural phase transition in the material resulting in local changes of the dielectric response [9].

 

References
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[3] F. Sigger et al. Apl. Phys. Lett. 121, 071102 (2022).
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[5] F. Sigger et al. Apl. Phys. Lett. 121, 071102 (2022).
[6] J. Rasmus Bankwitz et al. Optics Letters 48(21), 5783-5786 (2023).
[7] K. Nisi et al., Adv. Funct. Mater. 31, 2005977 (2020).
[8] S. Rajabpour et al. Adv. Mater. 2104265 (2021).
[9] J. Henz et al. in preparation (2024).