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Yue Zhao et al., an international team of scientists at the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), demonstrated nanoscale whispering gallery electron resonance in graphene by using the probe voltage of a scanning tunneling microscope to create a circular pn junction in nanoscale area like a circular wall of mirrors to the electrons and similar to what happens to acoustic wave in the famous whispering gallery of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
“An electron that hits the step head-on can tunnel straight through it,” said NIST researcher Nikolai Zhitenev. “But if electrons hit it at an angle, their waves can be reflected and travel along the sides of the curved walls of the barrier until they began to interfere with one another, creating a nanoscale electronic whispering gallery mode.”
The potential of graphene-based quantum electronic resonators and lenses is believed to be huge.
Read the original press release and article: Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology/ NIST ; *Y. Zhao, J. Wyrick, F. Natterer, J. Rodriguez-Nieva, C. Lewandowski, K. Watanabe, T. Taniguchi, L. Levitov, N. Zhitenev, and J. Stroscio. Creating and probing electron whispering-gallery modes in graphene. Science. 8 May 2015: Vol. 348, no. 6235, pp. 672-675. DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa7469.
credit: Jon Wyrick, CNST/NIST
(Recommended by Ed Perkins, posted by Yonhua Tzeng)