MRI: Acquisition of cryogen-free low-temperature scanning-probe spectroscopy system for nanophotonic and nanoelectronic device characterization

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The industrialized world and the United States in particular faces a critical Helium shortage, which threatens a multitude of industrial and medical applications requiring cryogenic cooling. For example, Magnetic Resonance Imagery relies on liquid Helium to cool the high-power magnets needed to create interior body images for clinical analysis and medical intervention. Helium is also indispensable to the U.S. space exploration program and other civilian and military uses. This proposal requests funding to purchase an instrument called attoDRY1100 that allows for carrying out sophisticated optical characterization of nanomaterials and devices at extremely low temperatures and high magnetic fields without the need for liquid Helium. This cryogen-free system completely eliminates the current annual liquid Helium operation costs of about $50,000 at Stevens Institute of Technology, and more importantly, avoids the annual consumption of about 5000 liters of a precious noble gas, thereby contributing to a "greener campus". The equipment will be incorporated into the shared-user Nanophotonics Lab at Stevens where it will serve the needs of a growing user base of over 30 students and staff representing 11 research groups from 5 departments at Stevens. The cryogen-free system will advance several NSF-funded projects that address fundamental questions of the light-matter interaction of nanomaterials at the forefront of current research. These projects also target a broad range of photonic devices that have potential transformative applications, such as in national security and sustainable energy. The broader impacts will come from the fact that the requested instrument will be housed in a central user facility which has a history of successful multidisciplinary training of a broad range of students from high school to postdoctoral researchers addressing forefront research in nanotechnology. The PI's will further expand their outreach activities to currently several hundred high schools students in the framework of the SEED program of the American Chemical Society and the ECOES program at Stevens, that will specifically include hands-on education on various nanotechnology tools, including the attoDRY1100.This proposal requests funding to purchase the attoDRY1100 cryogen-free cryostat with an integrated CFM-I scanning-probe confocal microscope insert. The cryogen-free system will benefit several NSF-funded projects that address fundamental questions of the light-matter interaction in nanomaterials, which include heterostructures of graphene and transition-metal dichalcogenides, ultra-clean carbon nanotubes, lithium-niobate microcavities, catalytic surfaces for biomass conversion, and solution-processed hybrid inorganic-organic semiconductor thin films. These projects target a broad range of photonic devices, including on-chip photodetectors, all-optical modulators, quantum light sources, thin-film organic solar cells, and Zeno-effect-based switches, which imply transformative applications in national security, sustainable energy, and beyond. The attoDRY1100 instrument offers a wealth of new functionalities and measurement modes highly desirable to the ongoing research projects. These include hyperspectral 2D-mapping of photoluminescence and photocurrent signals, cryogenic photolithography with 10 nm resolution, magneto-luminescence studies of confined excitons, in-situ Raman mapping of surface catalysis, and long-term drift-free quantum-optics studies of single quantum emitters.