Nanotechnology holds the promise for future electronic devices and new materials. Among the most promising are nanodisks and quantum tunneling based devices. Nanodisks constitute of great interest in potential applications such as data storage, binary logic gates and nano-plasmonics. When a magnetic nano disk material is made very thin its magnetic properties suffer a transition to a magnetic vortex state. During this talk I will show how this vortex state can be controlled by the thickness of the ferromagnet. This makes nanodisks ideal candidates for data storage technologies.

Quantum tunneling, a fundamental property of quantum mechanics, can also be studied using nanostructures. Here an electron can cross a potential barrier even though its energy is less than the barrier height. During this talk I will explain how tunnel junctions work and new prospects for its fabrication using exfoliated Graphene. This has been accomplished for the first time in my laboratory.

Edgar J. Patiño is an Associate Professor of Physics working in experimental condensed matter at the University of Los Andes (Colombia). He earned his undergraduate degree in Physics at the National Polytechnic University – (Ecuador). He spent one year as associate scientist at the Helsinki University of Technology (Finland). He carried out his Ph.D. studies at Cambridge University (UK) and Postdoctoral research at Laboratoire de Physique des Solides (France).