The JVSS Woman Researcher Award is a new award that has just been created. It was established with the aim of promoting active participation of young woman researchers in the Japan Society of Vacuum and Surface Science to realize a research activity environment in the spirit of diversity inclusive as soon as possible. We asked the winners of this award and other award-winning researchers to introduce their research in the feature article.

Inelastic electron tunneling spectroscopy (IETS) combined with scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) allows us to acquire vibrational signals at surfaces. In STM-IETS, a tunneling electron from the STM tip excites vibrations whenever the energy of the tunneling electron exceeds the vibrational energies. This opens up an inelastic channel in parallel with the elastic one and gives rise to an increase/decrease of the conductivity. As a consequence, a pair of peak and dip shows up at the bias voltages with respect to the Fermi level corresponding to the energy of vibrational energy. Until recently, the application of STM-IETS was limited to the localized vibration of single atoms and molecules adsorbed on surfaces. In principle, STM-IETS should be capable of detecting collective lattice dynamics, i.e., phonons. In this paper, I will introduce the theory of STM-IETS measurement for a metal surface and the application of this theory for surface phonons on Cu(110).

Spin-orbit interaction, which couples electron spin to its momentum, is a relativistic effect that appears in solid-states physics. Specifically, Rashba spin-orbit interaction, which is proportional to external electric field, plays a key role in realizing novel devices such as a spin FET and topological computers. Here, we report high gate controllability of the spin-orbit interaction in III-V semiconductor nanowire transistors with various geometries. We demonstrate a gate-all-around InAs nanowire transistor and a nearby back-gate InSb nanowire transistor, both of which enable us to apply strong electric field to an electron channel. Consequently, the gate tunability of Rashba spin-orbit interaction is more than ten times higher than those reported for III-V semiconductor FETs, including nanowire FETs with a standard back-gate geometry and Schottky FETs fabricated from two-dimensional quantum wells, all of which were studied as candidates of a spin FET. Our results pave a way toward realizing a nanoscale spin FET in the future.

The atomically ordered surfaces on the three-dimensionally (3D) architected structures contribute to the development for a new nanofabrication technique and the innovation of the underlying physical properties. The realization of 3D surfaces is committed to fostering a new study field in surface science, that is diverse and inclusive.

The study of rarefied gas flows based on kinetic theory of gases is one of the important foundations of vacuum technology. By contrast, “rarefied gas dynamics”, which is specialized for the study of rarefied gas flows, is an established field related to fluid dynamics. However, the knowledge accumulated in rarefied gas dynamics does not seem to have been well utilized in vacuum technology. The present note aims to review some results on fundamental rarefied gas flows, obtained in rarefied gas dynamics, that may be useful for vacuum technology. In addition, the definition of the Maxwell velocity distribution in a manner of rarefied gas dynamics, which differs slightly from that in vacuum technology, is given for reference.