Michael Sweetman
Rising Star
What encouraged you to submit your application to the 2025 Postgraduate Research Publication of the Year?
This award provides a great opportunity to showcase your research in the encouraging environment which Tyndall has created, particularly for students who publish early in their PhD when dissemination can still seem daunting.
What inspired you to choose the subject of your paper?
Understanding and predicting the morphology a metal takes when deposited onto a substrate is paramount, as it often determines the potential applications of a metal-monolayer combination. This allows us to investigate the interaction between metals and surfaces at an atomistic scale, while still being relevant to engineering solutions for a wide range of applications such as next generation transistors, interconnect architectures, and heterogeneous catalysis. The ability to study interesting systems which can have impact across a breadth of real-world technologies inspired the choice of this subject.
What’s your paper about and how did you prepare for it? What role did research leadership play in your approach?
We have studied the interaction of Cu with transition metal dichalcogenides (TMD), as this combination show promise for their use as both an ultrathin diffusion barrier and channel material in next generation semiconductor, where Cu is used as the line and source/drain contact. To enable these uses, a laterally growing Cu morphology is required to form conductive films.
Previous work investigating metal-monolayer interaction typically models the electronic properties of either single metal atom adsorption, or the properties of pristine metal-monolayer interfaces. Thereby, leaving a gap in understanding for the early stages of metal growth onto 2D materials, which this work investigates. This, work builds a comprehensive overview into the competing interactions which affect Cu morphology on TMD monolayers at the atomistic scale.
Research leadership has played an important role in conceptualising and finalising the methodology for this study, as well as improving my skills as a researcher to a state where I can produce, interpret, and explain results in a publication-worthy manner.
The selection for Research Publication of the Year is extremely competitive. What is your advice for those aspiring for nomination next year?
Although it can be difficult to put modesty aside, it is important to emphasise the value and impact of your research. Especially given how much effort and time you have put into it!
What is the single most significant support Tyndall has been able to offer you in achieving your research goals?
The access that Tyndall has been able to provide me to infrastructure such as high-power computing resources has been vital to my training as a researcher. The guidance from my supervisor Michael Nolan and mentor Cara-Lena Nies has also been crucial throughout my PhD.
View Michael’s research publication here ‘Structure and stability of copper nanoclusters on monolayer tungsten dichalcogenides‘.