“The effect of concept-driven revolution is to explain old things in new ways. The effect of tool-driven revolution is to discover new things that have to be explained.”
Freeman Dyson
Imagined Worlds
At the nanometer level, the traditional boundaries between physics, chemistry, engineering and the life sciences vanish. Physics, and in particular a background in scanning probe techniques, is an excellent basis to contribute significantly to the emerging field of nanotechnology.
The Grutter group is driven by exciting fundamental ‘big’ science questions. We invent, design, build and modify atomic force microscopes and related instruments. These tools are used to manipulate and study the structure – property relation of nanoscale systems. We are world leading in combining nanoscale spatial with femtosecond time resolution. Our group is interested in translating our fundamental scientific discoveries to commercial applications and are open to fruitful industrial collaborations.
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Professor of Physics, FRSC, FAPS
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James McGill Chair,
- Department of Physics, McGill University
Contact
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Atomic Force Microscopy is combined with ultrafast fs lasers to study time resolved optoelectronics and non-linear properties. This allows us to study many fundamental as well as application relevant phenomena at the ultimate time and length scales. This project is a collaboration with Univ. College London, U. Singapore and U. Ottawa.
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Electrostatic force microscopy (EFM) is a powerful tool to perform electron energy level spectroscopy on single dopants or atomic scale defects. With our collaborators at University College London and McGill, we are studying the quantum mechanical coupling of individual, atomically positioned dopant atoms.
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We want to understand how the structure of a defect changes the optoelectronic properties of molecules on a surface. Defects limit the efficiency and life time of organic photovoltaics. We also plan on studying molecular acceptor-donor structures with our chemistry collaborators at McGill and Koeln.
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We are builing and developing advanced AFM methods to atomically image and quantify electro- catalysis under full electrochemical control. We plan on implementing machine learning to increase throughput, allowing us to fundamentally understand and optimize promising material to convert CO2 to fuel. This is a collaboration with NRC and Materials Engineering at McGill.
We are a diverse group of researchers who value team work, perform exciting research, method and instrumentation development and take advantage of the stimulating environment provided by McGill and Montreal. Past team members have gone on to very successful careers in academia, start-ups, industry or government. To meet current members and for more information please see our group page.