Intro. |
Chemically-grown nanostructures provide a promising platform to study various quantum phenomena in low-dimensional systems. The high crystallinity in their structures and the huge versatility in their compositions make such nano-structured materials more attractive for research in the field of mesoscopic quantum transport. Quantum confinement and quantum interference effects such as the Coulomb blockade, weak localization, universal conductance fluctuations, and Febry-Perot interference have been successfully observed in chemically-grown nanostructures such as carbon nanotubes and semiconducting nanowires. Nowadays, more sophisticated schemes of multiple-quantum dots and nanostructure/superconductor hybrid devices are being developed for the realization of quantum information devices, in which single-bit operation can be attained by manipulating quantum-mechanical entities such as the charge, the spin, and the photon. |