The Laboratory of Experimental Physics of Nanostructured Materials (EPNM) is devoted to the investigation of confinement effects in mesoscopic systems including nanomagnets, structured superconductors, plasmonics, and hybrids heterostructures, with the aim of unveiling new phenomena beyond the bulk response.
During the last decades we have witnessed continuous breakthroughs in the design and fabrication of tailor made artificial templates at the nanoscale, so called artificial materials. This is a consequence of the ongoing nanotechnology revolution that has permitted superior performance first on electronic devices, micro-electro-mechanical systems, micro-fluidic devices, and more recently in the manipulation and confinement of light.
Our logo it is an artistic representation summarizing a common and recursive pattern appearing along several systems we have investigated such as whirpools of supercurrents in superconductors, chiral planar metallic structures used for plasmonics studies, or the rotation of self propelled microorgnanisms when in contact with a surface.
The main idea behind structuring materials down to dimensions matching the characteristic sizes determining the physics of the elementary blocks (i.e. electrons in metals, photons in dielectric media, plasmons at metallic interfaces, or fluxons in superconductors) is that boundary conditions, surface effects, and interfaces become more relevant and lead to pronounced modifications of the general response of the system. In physics, the most popular example is the emergence of the discrete character of nature, the so-called quantum limit, once this nanoscale realm is reached. It is precisely the curiosity for exploring the effects of spatial confinement and the importance of the scale, what drives our experimental group. We are particularly interested in hybrid systems where the interplay of different physical mechanisms can lead to entirely new phenomena.