My research interests lie in the structural and electronic properties of metallic layers on a surface that are less than two atoms in thickness.  The area of nanoelectronics seeks to understand how a few atoms might be placed to make electronic devices whose dimensions are near the atomic size level.  One important characteristic which is important in
electronic devices is electrical conductivity, which is very different for a few atoms than it is for bulk materials.  In the laboratory, I am setting up an electrical conductance measurements and an electron diffraction measurement (RHEED, Reflective High energy Electron Diffraction), so structural information and electronic information can simultaneously be measured as the structures are made.  The next experiments with this system will be silver films deposited by Molecular Beam Epitaxy onto a silicon surface held at 100K in ultrahigh vacuum.  In this system, there are some intriguing structural developments due to quantum confinement of electrons in the metallic film.