Home page of Yann Michel Niquet

From top to bottom:
(a) An InAs/GaAs nanowire superlattice with radius R = 10 nm and 4 nm thick InAs layers (exploded view). The bond length is 6.69% larger in InAs than in GaAs.
(b) The hydrostatic strain (variation of the volume of the unit cell with reference to the unstrained materials) in the nanowire. The InAs layer is compressed by GaAs but can partly relax strains by distorting the surface of the nanowire.
(c & d) The square of the lowest-lying electron (E1) and hole (H1) wavefunctions in the nanowire (one-fourth of the atoms are shown for clarity). Strain relaxation traps the electron at the surface of the nanowire while the piezoelectric field pushes the hole against the upper interface.

Research interests

Electronic structure and properties of materials and nanostructures

Ab-initio methods:

Density functional theory (ground-state)
Many-body perturbation theory (GW for quasiparticle states)
Time-dependent density functional theory (excited states)

Tight-binding models for large systems and nanostructures:

Dielectric, optical and transport properties of semiconductor nanostructures

Since Dec. 2003: Research staff member at the Institute of Nanosciences and Cryogeny (INAC) of the CEA organization in Grenoble, France

2001-2003: Post-doc on Van der Waals interactions within density functional theory (UCL, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium)

2001: PhD thesis on the transport properties of semiconductor nanostructures (University of Sciences and Technologies of Lille, France) [download (in French)]

1997: Diploma of advanced studies in solid state physics from the University of Orsay, France
1997: Engineering degree from the « Institut Supérieur d'Electronique du Nord » (ISEN) in Lille, France

Scientific publications

Full list of publications

Selected publications:

« Electronic and optical properties of InAs/GaAs nanowire superlattices » [*]
Y. M. Niquet,
Phys. Rev. B. 74, 155304 (2006)
[abstract (Phys. Rev. B)] [article (pdf format)] [copyright]

« Electronic structure of semiconductor nanowires »
Y. M. Niquet, A. Lherbier, N. H. Quang, M. V. Fernandez-Serra, X. Blase and C. Delerue,
Phys. Rev. B. 73, 165319 (2006)
[abstract (Phys. Rev. B)] [article (pdf format)] [copyright]

« Band-gap energy in the random-phase approximation to density-functional theory »
Y. M. Niquet and X. Gonze,
Phys. Rev. B. 70, 245115 (2004)
[abstract (Phys. Rev. B)] [article (pdf format)] [copyright]

« Asymptotic behavior of the exchange-correlation potentials from the linear-response Sham-Schlüter equation »
Y. M. Niquet, M. Fuchs and X. Gonze,
J. Chem. Phys. 118, 9504 (2003)
[abstract (J. Chem. Phys.)] [preprint (pdf format)]

« Theory of single particle tunneling in semiconductor quantum dots »
Y. M. Niquet, C. Delerue, G. Allan and M. Lannoo,
Phys. Rev. B 64, 113305 (2001)
[abstract (Phys. Rev. B)] [article (pdf format)] [copyright]

« Method for tight-binding parametrization: Application to silicon nanostructures »
Y. M. Niquet, C. Delerue, G. Allan and M. Lannoo,
Phys. Rev. B 62, 5109 (2000)
[abstract (Phys. Rev. B)] [article (pdf format)] [copyright]