MARC A. KASTNER, Donner
Professor of Science; Dean, School of Science
Research Interests
Professor Kastner's group is studying the motion of electrons in
nanometer-size semiconductor structures and in transition-metal
oxides. These are systems in which the motion of electrons is highly
correlated. In simple metals and semiconductors, like Aluminum and
Silicon, each electron moves as though it were independent of all
the others. The Coulomb interactions of the other electrons creates
an average potential that changes things like the electron's effective
mass, but for the most part, a single-electron picture is adequate.
In the oxides of transition metals, this single-particle model breaks
down. The electrons are highly localized in the atomic orbitals
of the transition metal ions and, as a result, the motion of each
electron strongly affects the motion of others. This results in
unusual magnetic and electronic properties. In the case of the transition
metal oxides, this localization takes place naturally. However,
in the past few decades, the techniques developed for the electronics
industry have allowed us to create artificially localized electrons,
which also display strong correlations. One example is the single
electron transistor. This is a device in which electrostatic fields
confine electrons to a small region of space inside a semiconductor.
The confinement causes the number of electrons in the small region
to be quantized, and other effects of strong correlations, such
as the Kondo effect, can be observed. While one confined droplet
of electrons can be studied in a single electron transistor, it
is also interesting to study arrays of confined regions. Kastner's
group is doing this in collaboration with Prof.
Moungi Bawendi's Group of the MIT Department of Chemistry. In
this case, the system consists of arrays of identical nano-crystals
grown by a colloidal chemistry technique.
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Biographical Sketch
Professor Kastner joined the Department of Physics in 1973, was
named Donner Professor of Science in 1989, appointed Department
Head in February 1998, and in July 2007, became Dean of the School of Science. A graduate of the University of Chicago (S.B.
1967, M.S. 1969, Ph.D. 1972), he was a research fellow at Harvard
University prior to joining MIT.
He served as Head of the MIT Department of Physics Division of
Atomic, Condensed Matter, and Plasma Physics from 1983 to 1987,
and as Associate Director of MIT's Consortium for Superconducting
Electronics—a collaborative program designed to advance the
technology of thin-film superconducting electronics—from 1989
to 1992. He served as Director of MIT's Center for Materials Science
and Engineering from 1993 to 1998.
[top] Selected Publications
Kastner, M. A., Goldhaber-Gordon, D., Kondo
Physics with Single Electron Transistors, Solid State
Communications, 119 (2001) 245-252.
Kastner, M. A., The
Single Electron Transistor and Artificial Atoms. Annalen
der Physik, 9:885 (2000).
Kastner, M. A., R. J. Birgeneau, G. Shirane and Y. Endoh., Magnetic,
Transport, and Optical Properties of Monolayer Copper Oxides.
Reviews of Modern Physics, 70:897 (1998).
Kastner, M. A., "Artificial Atoms." Physics Today
46(1):24 (1993): Part
1; Part
2.
Kastner, M. A., The
Single-Electron Transistor. Rev. Mod. Phys.
64:849 (1992).
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