Once again, the Wissenschaftsnacht at RWTH Aachen proved to be a resounding success! This year, as in previous years, many members of our group contributed their time and expertise to make the evening a memorable experience for visitors.

On Monday 04.11.2024, Eike Icking successfully defended his PhD thesis. Congratulations to Dr. Eike Icking on this great accomplishment! Note the fantastic cake by Corinne Steiner.

On 27.09.2024, Samuel Möller successfully defended his PhD thesis. Congratulations to Dr. Samuel Möller on this commendable accomplishment!

Today we celebrated that Emma Horgan from Imperial College London successfully completed her 12-week internship in our group as part of the ML4Q Undergraduate Research Internship Program. During her internship, Emma actively participated in our research activities related to bilayer graphene quantum dots and made valuable contributions to our ongoing projects. We greatly appreciate Emma's enthusiasm and the fresh perspectives she has brought to our team. We wish her all the best!

Last Friday, our annual institute excursion to the Wildenhof at the Rursee took place once again, and it was a great fun! The day kicked off with cycling (for a few of us) and various water sport activities in the morning. In the afternoon, we gathered on the terrace for a barbecue, with plenty of food and drinks to go around. A big thank you to everyone who participated and helped make this happen!

Nano Letters 24, 11454 (2024)
Cryogenic field-effect transistors (FETs) offer great potential for applications, the most notable example being classical control electronics for quantum information processors. For the latter, on-chip FETs with low power consumption are crucial. This requires operating voltages in the millivolt range, which are only achievable in devices with ultrasteep subthreshold slopes. However, in conventional cryogenic metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS)FETs based on bulk material, the experimentally achieved inverse subthreshold slopes saturate around a few mV/dec due to disorder and charged defects at the MOS interface. FETs based on two-dimensional materials offer a promising alternative. Here, we show that FETs based on Bernal stacked bilayer graphene encapsulated in hexagonal boron nitride and graphite gates exhibit inverse subthreshold slopes of down to 250 μV/dec at 0.1 K, approaching the Boltzmann limit. This result indicates an effective suppression of band tailing in van der Waals heterostructures without bulk interfaces, leading to superior device performance at cryogenic temperature.

We are pleased to announce that Professor Slava Rotkin from Penn State University (US) has successfully completed a 3 month visit to our group. During this time, Slava worked closely with our team, contributing to several ongoing projects and sharing valuable insights from his extensive expertise in nanoscience and nanotechnology, with a particular focus on theoretical modelling of nanomaterials. We wish Slava continued success in his future endeavours and hope that this sabbatical experience has been as rewarding for him as it has been for our group.

From 29. April to 1. June, our Master student Jan-Lucas Uslu visited Prof. David Goldhaber-Gordon at Stanford University. During the research stay, Jan worked on the application of machine learning techniques to advanced image analysis and other topics. This visit helped with ongoing research in the field of 2D materials and twisted bilayer graphene. We support our students in gaining international research experience and academic collaborations.