Masters and Bachelors thesis projects
The Schröter lab offers thesis projects for Masters and Bachelors students from Halle, other parts of Germany, and abroad. Since we are a small but growing research group, we can offer excellent one-on-one supervision. A thesis project is a great opportunity to get to know the research environment at the institute and prepare for a subsequent PhD project here. Below you can find a list of possible thesis projects, but other topics may also become available on a short notice, which may not be advertised here yet. Please contact Niels Schröter directly to discuss research opportunities for your thesis.
Mechanically exfoliated 2D materials such as graphene are one of the most actively researched materials classes. In this project, we want to exploit our new experimental capabilities to fabricate 2D materials in ultra-high-vacuum conditions to create artificial chiral structures. These could become a new source of spin- and orbitally polarized electrons that may be employed in new memory devices.
In 2019, we discovered the first example of a chiral topological semimetal in a single crystal. Since then, we have demonstrated that chiral semimetals exhibit many exotic properties that make these materials promising for next generation memory devices. However, a major roadblock is the synthesis of homochiral thin films of only one structural handedness. In this project, you will explore new synthesis routes and characterize your samples with the advanced spectroscopic tools available in our lab.
Topological qubits based on Majorana zero modes could offer a more stable and scalable platform for quantum computing than competing technologies. Interfaces between III-V semiconductors and s-wave superconductors have been predicted to be a promising platform to realize this technology. However, one of the major roadblock remains the lack of control about the hybrid quantum states at the interface. In this project we will grow semiconductor-superconductor heterostructures and investigate their electronic structure properties with high-resolution spin-resolved laser-ARPES with the aim to identify structure-property-relationships that allow us to control the band hybridization at the interface.