The core problem that DAFNEOX Project address is the controlled integration of nanoelements (as nanoparticles or nanochains) in regular patterns on top of self-organized materials, mainly oxide thin films for applications from spintronics and catalytics to optoelectronics. Beating the intrinsic limitations of lithographic methods for minituarization is one of highest nanoscience challenges. Our bottom-up approach take advantage of self-assembling phenomena occurring during the growth of thin films by physical methods.
By understanding the mechanisms controlling these phenomena we have prepared a wide variety of nanotemplated oxides with ordered arrays of nanoholes over a large surface. Furthermore, oxides being a large family of materials, they offer unique opportunities due to the wide range of reported functional properties. We have obtained nanotemplates with properties ranging from ferromagnetic or ferroelectric, metallic, semimetallic or insulating.
Later on, these nanotemplates have been used for the guided self-assembly of other nanoobjects as, for example, nanoparticles and nanochains. This has opened the possibility to study charge transport properties in individual nanoelements by the use of nanogap devices where new phenomena may be expected due to the reduced dimensions.
Expertise in studying optical, transport and magnetic properties has allowed us to establish the link between nanostructured materials and their functional properties as, for example, in the study of resistive switching phenomena, spin dynamics or magnetization reversal, all of them relevant in spintronic or optoelectronic applications
Our project brings together expertise in experimental and theoretical physics and a substantial effort was devoted to understand the properties of these nanoelements as model systems for the interpretation of complex nanoparticle/oxide behavior during self-assembling phenomena. Theoretical models have been used to explain self-assembling processes of magnetic nanoparticles into close-packed arrangements and into large macroscopic chains.
In summary, the advances that have been achieved through this interdisciplinary research will contribute to the design of a set of novel nanostructures of intelligent materials, which could be useful in variety of physical devices such as sensors, catalysts or magnetic storage media.
