Center for Artificial Low Dimensional Electronic Systems

Our society in the twenty-first century is based on information technology, which is supported by logic and memory devices produced by the semiconductor industry. So far, the development of the device industry has been maintained by the progressive downsizing of technology to mass-produce smaller and cheaper devices. However, the spectacular development in recent decades, which has resulted in devices as small as 20 nm in size, has also revealed the obvious and imminent fundamental limitation of downsizing. This constitutes the deepening crisis in the electronics industry that threatens to impede further development in information technology and society. The situation therefore calls for the following urgent remedies: 1. The invention of new devices of unprecedented dimensions and functionality 2. A paradigm shift in information processing (e.g., quantum/neural computing) 3. Major advances in our understanding of the fundamental physics underlying breakthrough devices and information processing. We aim to (a) create atomically controlled artificial materials (e.g., wires, layers, ultra-thin films, heterointerfaces, and multilayers) that can host novel low-dimensional electronic systems; (b) devise methods to gain ultimate atomic-scale control over these materials in order to manipulate their local and global electronic properties; and (c) discover new types of quantum matter originating from exotic symmetries and orders of low-dimensional electrons, and address the significant problems posed by quantum phase fluctuations, competitions, and low-dimensional electrons in transition. We propose an innovative approach to achieve the above goals. It combines the atomically controlled in-situ growth of new materials with advanced spectroscopic and microscopic techniques (e.g., spin-and angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy; ultra-low-temperature high-magnetic-field scanning tunneling microscopy). We strive to pave the way for producing revolutionary electronic or spintronic devices based on new types of quantum electronic properties inherent in low dimensions.