Dr. Sebastian Stepanow

Research area

Dr. Sebastian Stepanow leads the scanning tunneling microscopy laboratory in the Magnetism and Interface Physics group. The research of this subgroup deals with the local investigation of the electronic and magnetic properties of low dimensional materials from two-dimensional sheets down to single atoms and molecules. On the one hand, we investigate the electrochemical potential with nanometer resolution in current–biased devices of thin conducting materials like graphene. These investigations provides unprecedented insights into the charge carrier flow at nanoscopic and mesoscopic length scales. The other activities are centered on atomic-scale quantum magnetism. The research in this area focuses on single molecule and single atom magnets adsorbed at surfaces. These objects serve as model quantum systems providing a test bed for the investigation and tuning of the coupling between their magnetic, electronic, and phononic degrees of freedom which ultimately determines the longitudinal and transverse relaxation times of the nanoscale systems.