Electronic Motion in Nanowires

Modern nanotechnology aims to create artificial materials with novel properties, e.g. semiconductor nanowires for high-speed electronics. To understand the behavior of these structures and to make them even faster, smaller, and more efficient, scientists would like to trace directly how electrons move on length scales of only a few atoms. These processes often occur extremely quickly, which has spurred a drive to develop a microscope that combines excellent spatial resolution with the highest possible temporal resolution. This study trace the time-dependent dielectric function at the surface of a single photoexcited InAs nanowire in all three spatial dimensions.

Besides answering technological questions in electronics and photovoltaics, ultrafast pump-probe nanoscopy provides application potential ranging from novel physical insights into exotic materials to understanding biological processes on the molecular scale.

This measurement was realized with the IR-neaSCOPE+fs.