Affiliated PHD: Marieke Altena

University of Twente

Email: m.w.altena@utwente.nl

Student of pillar 2

Short Biography

My name is Marieke and I am a PhD student at the University of Twente under the guidance of Chuan Li and Alexander Brinkman.
Before I started my PhD, I studied Applied Physics (both bachelor and master) at the University of Twente where I specialized in the direction of Nanoelectronic Materials and Thin Films. During my master thesis, I looked at methods to introduce magnetism into materials of the BixTey-family, with specific interest in the intrinsic topological insulator VBi2Te4 and the magnetically doped V-Bi4Te3. These materials are interesting as a possible platform for the quantum anomalous Hall effect.
In January 2023, I started as a PhD candidate working on the VIDI-project SuperHOTS of Chuan Li. This project has a large overlap with the QuMat consortium, and therefore I am an affiliated PhD student of the QuMat program. My research focusses on studying the material WTe2 in combination with superconductivity as a platform for Majorana bound states.
For me, the focus is on experimental work where we start by studying the thin film growth of WTe2 by molecular beam epitaxy and eventually want to move to introducing superconductivity to our system and focus on the transport properties of our samples.