arXiv subjects

Francesco Rossella

Publications and source records attributed to Francesco Rossella.

18 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Graphene Electric Double-Layer Transistors for Enhanced-Sensitivity Label-Free Detection of Human Serum Albumin

Accurate detection of human serum albumin (HSA) is essential for the early diagnosis and monitoring of renal and hepatic disorders. We present a graphene-based electrolyte-gated field-effect transistor (EGFET) for label-free, real-time quantification of HSA under non-Faradaic operation. Devices exploit the high interfacial capacitance of the electric double layer (EDL) to transduce electrostatic perturbations induced by albumin adsorption into measurable conductance modulation. Negatively charged HSA molecules induce systematic modulation of the graphene channel, producing a concentration-dependent displacement of the Dirac voltage consistent with p-type doping. To establish a molecular-level interpretation of the sensing response, Brownian Dynamics simulations show that HSA adsorbs onto graphene through multiple adsorption orientations associated with heterogeneous interfacial charge distributions and variable dipole alignments relative to the surface. Adsorption is energetically stabilized by van der Waals interactions. Analysis of transfer characteristics across concentrations ranging from 0.01 to 30mgmL-1 reveals a correlation between surface charge density and carrier transport modulation within the electric double layer. Optimized devices exhibit a limit of detection of 0.0087 mg mL-1 and a linear dynamic range extending to 10 mg mL-1. The response remains non-Faradaic under sub-volt operation with reversible and reproducible behavior. The use of an inverse-mobility analytical metric highlights the role of disorder-enhanced carrier scattering in signal amplification, enabling sensitive electrostatic detection while preserving reversible device operation. These results establish liquid-gated graphene EGFETs as a promising platform for quantitative protein sensing and provide insight into disorder-mediated transport mechanisms in graphene bioelectronic devices.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2026

Functionalization of reduced graphite oxide sheets with a zwitterionic surfactant

Films of a few layers in thickness of reduced graphite oxide, RGO, sheets functionalized by the zwitterionic surfactant N-dodecyl-N,N-dimethyl-3-ammonio-1-propanesulfonate, DDPS, are obtained by using the Langmuir-Blodgett method. The quality of the RGO sheets is checked by analyzing the degrees of reduction and defect repair by means of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy -AFM, field-emission scanning electron microscopy -SEM, micro-Raman spectroscopy, and electrical conductivity measurements. A modified Hummers method is used to obtain highly oxidized graphite oxide, GO, together with a centrifugation-based method to improve the quality of GO. The GO samples are reduced by hydrazine or vitamin C. Functionalization of RGO with the zwitterionic surfactant improves the degrees of reduction and defect repair of the two reducing agents and significantly increases the electrical conductivity of paperlike films compared with those prepared from unfunctionalized RGO.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2024

Engineering nanowire quantum dots with iontronics

Achieving stable, high-quality quantum dots has proven challenging within device architectures rooted in conventional solid-state device fabrication paradigms. In fact, these are grappled with complex protocols in order to balance ease of realization, scalability, and quantum transport properties. Here, we demonstrate a novel paradigm of semiconductor quantum dot engineering by exploiting ion gating. Our approach is found to enable the realization and control of a novel quantum dot system: the iontronic quantum dot. Clear Coulomb blockade peaks and their dependence on an externally applied magnetic field are reported, together with the impact of device architecture and confinement potential on quantum dot quality. Devices incorporating two identical quantum dots in series are realized, addressing the reproducibility of the developed approach. The iontronic quantum dot represents a novel class of zero-dimensional quantum devices engineered to overcome the need for thin dielectric layers, facilitating single-step device fabrication. Overall, the reported approach holds the potential to revolutionize the development of functional quantum materials and devices, driving rapid progress in solid state quantum technologies

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arXiv2022

Giant reduction of thermal conductivity in twinning superlattice InAsSb nanowires

Semiconductor nanostructures hold great promise for high-efficiency waste heat recovery exploiting thermoelectric energy conversion, a technological breakthrough that could significantly contribute to providing environmentally friendly energy sources as well as in enabling the realization of self-powered biomedical and wearable devices. A crucial requirement in this field is the reduction of the thermal conductivity of the thermoelectric material without detrimentally affecting its electrical transport properties. In this work we demonstrate a drastic reduction of thermal conductivity in III-V semiconductor nanowires due to the presence of intentionally realized periodic crystal lattice twin planes. The electrical and thermal transport of these nanostructures, known as twinning superlattice nanowires, have been probed and compared with their twin-free counterparts, showing a one order of magnitude decrease of thermal conductivity while maintaining unaltered electrical transport properties, thus yielding a factor ten enhancement of the thermoelectric figure of merit, ZT. Our study reports for the first time the experimental measurement of electrical and thermal properties in twinning superlattice nanowires, which emerge as a novel class of nanomaterials for high efficiency thermoelectric energy harvesting.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2020

High-quality electrical transport using scalable CVD graphene

Producing and manipulating graphene on fab-compatible scale, while maintaining its remarkable carrier mobility, is key to finalize its technological application. We show that a large-scale approach (chemical vapor deposition on Cu followed by polymer-mediated semi-dry transfer) yields single-layer graphene crystals fully comparable, in terms of electronic transport, to micro-mechanically exfoliated flakes. hBN is used to encapsulate the graphene crystals $-$ without taking part to their detachment from the growth catalyst $-$ and study their intrinsic properties in field-effect devices. At room temperature, the electron-phonon coupling sets the mobility to $\sim1.3 \times10^5$ cm$^2$V$^{-1}$s$^{-1}$ at $\sim10^{11}$ cm$^{-2}$ concentration. At cryogenic temperatures, the mobility ($ > 6\times10^5$ cm$^2$V$^{-1}$s$^{-1}$ at $\sim10^{11}$ cm$^{-2}$) is limited by the devices' physical edges, and charge fluctuations $ < 7\times10^9$ cm$^{-2}$ are detected. Under perpendicular magnetic fields, we observe early onset of Landau quantization ($B\sim50$ mT) and signatures of electronic correlation, including the fractional quantum Hall effect.

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arXiv2020

30$^\circ$-twisted bilayer graphene quasicrystals from chemical vapor deposition

The artificial stacking of atomically thin crystals suffers from intrinsic limitations in terms of control and reproducibility of the relative orientation of exfoliated flakes. This drawback is particularly severe when the properties of the system critically depend on the twist angle, as in the case of the dodecagonal quasicrystal formed by two graphene layers rotated by 30$^\circ$. Here we show that large-area 30$^\circ$-rotated bilayer graphene can be grown deterministically by chemical vapor deposition on Cu, eliminating the need of artificial assembly. The quasicrystals are easily transferred to arbitrary substrates and integrated in high-quality hBN-encapsulated heterostructures, which we process into dual-gated devices exhibiting carrier mobility up to $10^5$ cm$^2$/Vs. From low-temperature magnetotransport, we find that the graphene quasicrystals effectively behave as uncoupled graphene layers, showing 8-fold degenerate quantum Hall states: this result indicates that the Dirac cones replica detected by previous photo-emission experiments do not contribute to the electrical transport.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2020

Morphology and magneto-transport in exfoliated graphene on ultrathin crystalline \b{eta}-Si3N4(0001)/Si(111)

We report the first experimental study of graphene transferred on \b{eta}-Si3N4(0001)/Si(111). Our work provides a comprehensive quantitative understanding of the physics of ultrathin Si3N4 as a gate dielectric for graphene-based devices. The Si3N4 film was grown on Si(111) under ultra-high vacuum (UHV) conditions and investigated by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). Subsequently, a graphene flake was deposited on top of it by a polymer-based transfer technique, and a Hall bar device was fabricated from the graphene flake. STM was employed again to study the graphene flake under UHV conditions after device fabrication and showed that surface quality is preserved. Electrical transport measurements, carried out at low temperature in magnetic field, revealed back gate modulation of carrier type and density in the graphene channel and showed the occurrence of weak localization. Under these experimental conditions, no leakage current between back gate and graphene channel was detected.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2020

Strategy for accurate thermal biasing at the nanoscale

We analyze the benefits and shortcomings of a thermal control in nanoscale electronic conductors by means of the contact heating scheme. Ideally, this straightforward approach allows one to apply a known thermal bias across nanostructures directly through metallic leads, avoiding conventional substrate intermediation. We show, by using the average noise thermometry and local noise sensing technique in InAs nanowire based devices, that a nanoscale metallic constriction on a SiO2 substrate acts like a diffusive conductor with negligible electron-phonon relaxation and non-ideal leads. The non-universal impact of the leads on the achieved thermal bias -- which depends on their dimensions, shape and material composition -- is hard to minimize, but is possible to accurately calibrate in a properly designed nano-device. Our results allow to reduce the issue of the thermal bias calibration to the knowledge of the heater resistance and pave the way for accurate thermoelectric or similar measurements at the nanoscale.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2020

Orbital Tuning of Tunnel Coupling in InAs/InP Nanowire Quantum Dots

We report results on the control of barrier transparency in InAs/InP nanowire quantum dots via the electrostatic control of the device electron states. Recent works demonstrated that barrier transparency in this class of devices displays a general trend just depending on the total orbital energy of the trapped electrons. We show that a qualitatively different regime is observed at relatively low filling numbers, where tunneling rates are rather controlled by the axial configuration of the electron orbital. Transmission rates versus filling are further modified by acting on the radial configuration of the orbitals by means of electrostatic gating, and the barrier transparency for the various orbitals is found to evolve as expected from numerical simulations. The possibility to exploit this mechanism to achieve a controlled continuous tuning of the tunneling rate of an individual Coulomb blockade resonance is discussed.

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arXiv2019

Microwave-Assisted Tunneling in Hard-Wall InAs/InP Nanowire Quantum Dots

With downscaling of electronic circuits, components based on semiconductor quantum dots are assuming increasing relevance for future technologies. Their response under external stimuli intrinsically depend on their quantum properties. Here we investigate single-electron tunneling in hard-wall InAs/InP nanowires in the presence of an off-resonant microwave drive. Our heterostructured nanowires include InAs quantum dots (QDs) and exhibit different tunnel-current regimes. In particular, for source-drain bias up to few mV Coulomb diamonds spread with increasing contrast as a function of microwave power and present multiple current polarity reversals. This behavior can be modelled in terms of voltage fluctuations induced by the microwave field and presents features that depend on the interplay of the discrete energy levels that contribute to the tunneling process.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2019

Anisotropies of the g-factor tensor and diamagnetic coefficient in crystal-phase quantum dots in InP nanowires

Crystal-phase low-dimensional structures offer great potential for the implementation of photonic devices of interest for quantum information processing. In this context, unveiling the fundamental parameters of the crystal phase structure is of much relevance for several applications. Here, we report on the anisotropy of the g-factor tensor and diamagnetic coefficient in wurtzite/zincblende (WZ/ZB) crystal-phase quantum dots (QDs) realized in single InP nanowires. The WZ and ZB alternating axial sections in the NWs are identified by high-angle annular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy. The electron (hole) g-factor tensor and the exciton diamagnetic coefficients in WZ/ZB crystal-phase QDs are determined through micro-photoluminescence measurements at low temperature (4.2 K) with different magnetic field configurations, and rationalized by invoking the spin-correlated orbital current model. Our work provides key parameters for band gap engineering and spin states control in crystal-phase low-dimensional structures in nanowires.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2019

Thermoelectric conversion at 30K in InAs/InP nanowire quantum dots

We demonstrate high-temperature thermoelectric conversion in InAs/InP nanowire quantum dots by taking advantage of their strong electronic confinement. The electrical conductance G and the thermopower S are obtained from charge transport measurements and accurately reproduced with a theoretical model accounting for the multi-level structure of the quantum dot. Notably, our analysis does not rely on the estimate of co-tunnelling contributions since electronic thermal transport is dominated by multi-level heat transport. By taking into account two spin-degenerate energy levels we are able to evaluate the electronic thermal conductance K and investigate the evolution of the electronic figure of merit ZT as a function of the quantum dot configuration and demonstrate ZT ~ 35 at 30 K, corresponding to an electronic effciency at maximum power close to the Curzon- Ahlborn limit.

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arXiv2018

Ionic liquid gating of InAs nanowire-based field effect transistors

We report the operation of a field-effect transistor based on a single InAs nanowire gated by an ionic liquid. Liquid gating yields very efficient carrier modulation with a transconductance value thirty time larger than standard back gating with the SiO2 /Si++ substrate. Thanks to this wide modulation we show the controlled evolution from semiconductor to metallic-like behavior in the nanowire. This work provides the first systematic study of ionic-liquid gating in electronic devices based on individual III-V semiconductor nanowires: we argue this architecture opens the way to a wide range of fundamental and applied studies from the phase-transitions to bioelectronics.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2018

Gate-tunable spatial modulation of localized plasmon resonances

Nanoplasmonics exploits the coupling between light and collective electron density oscillations (plasmons) to bypass the stringent limits imposed by diffraction. This coupling enables confinement of light to sub-wavelength volumes and is usually exploited in nanostructured metals. Substantial efforts are being made at the current frontier of the field to employ electron systems in semiconducting and semimetallic materials since these add the exciting possibility of realizing electrically tunable and/or active nanoplasmonic devices. Here we demonstrate that a suitable design of the doping profile in a semiconductor nanowire (NW) can be used to tailor the plasmonic response and induce localization effects akin to those observed in metal nanoparticles. Moreover, by field-effect carrier modulation, we demonstrate that these localized plasmon resonances can be spatially displaced along the nanostructure body, thereby paving the way for the implementation of spatially tunable plasmonic circuits.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2015

Nanoscale spin rectifiers controlled by the Stark effect

The control of orbital and spin state of single electrons is a key ingredient for quantum information processing, novel detection schemes, and, more generally, is of much relevance for spintronics. Coulomb and spin blockade (SB) in double quantum dots (DQDs) enable advanced single-spin operations that would be available even for room-temperature applications for sufficiently small devices. To date, however, spin operations in DQDs were observed at sub-Kelvin temperatures, a key reason being that scaling a DQD system while retaining an independent field-effect control on the individual dots is very challenging. Here we show that quantum-confined Stark effect allows an independent addressing of two dots only 5 nm apart with no need for aligned nanometer-size local gating. We thus demonstrate a scalable method to fully control a DQD device, regardless of its physical size. In the present implementation we show InAs/InP nanowire (NW) DQDs that display an experimentally detectable SB up to 10 K. We also report and discuss an unexpected re-entrant SB lifting as a function magnetic-field intensity.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2014

Large thermal biasing of individual gated nanostructures

We demonstrate a novel nanoheating scheme that yields very large and uniform temperature gradients up to about 1K every 100nm, in an architecture which is compatible with the field-effect control of the nanostructure under test. The temperature gradients demonstrated largely exceed those typically obtainable with standard resistive heaters fabricated on top of the oxide layer. The nanoheating platform is demonstrated in the specific case of a short-nanowire device.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2013

Giant thermovoltage in single InAs-nanowire field-effect transistors

Millivolt range thermovoltage is demonstrated in single InAs-nanowire based field effect transistors. Thanks to a buried heating scheme, we drive both a large thermal bias DT>10K and a strong field-effect modulation of electric conductance on the nanostructures. This allows the precise mapping of the evolution of the Seebeck coefficient S as a function of the gate-controlled conductivity between room temperature and 100K$. Based on these experimental data a novel estimate of the electron mobility is given. This value is compared with the result of standard field-effect based mobility estimates and discussed in relation to the effect of charge traps in the devices.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2012

Magneto-transport of graphene and quantum phase transitions in the quantum Hall regime

We studied the magneto-transport in SiO2 substrate-supported monolayer graphene and the quantum phase transitions that characterize the quantum Hall regime, using magnetic fields up to 28T and temperatures down to 4K. The analysis of the temperature dependence of the Hall and longitudinal resistivity reveals new non-universalities of the critical exponents of the plateau-insulator transition. These exponent depends on the type of disorder that governs the electrical transport, which knowledge is important for the design and fabrication of new graphene nano-devices.

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