Academic Career and Research Areas

Prof. Tornow's research area comprises electronic transport in (bio-) molecular and memristive systems. Methods of molecular and colloidal self-assembly are used to realize novel functional electronic systems. The main focus is on the investigation of quantum transport phenomena in hybrid organic-inorganic thin film structures and on the development of devices for neuromorphic electronics.

After studying physics in Braunschweig and Heidelberg, Prof. Tornow received his doctoral degree from the University of Stuttgart in 1997 with a dissertation at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research (Prof. K. v. Klitzing). Subsequently, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel (Prof. M. Heiblum), and later on the development of RF devices at Infineon Technologies, Munich. From 2001 to 2006, Prof. Tornow headed an independent BMBF junior research group at the Walter Schottky Institute of the TU Munich (Prof. G. Abstreiter). He acquired his postdoctoral teaching qualification (habilitation) in experimental physics at TUM in 2007. From 2006 to 2013, Prof. Tornow was a university professor at TU Braunschweig, and in March 2013 he was appointed professor of Molecular Electronics at TUM. Since April 2016, Prof. Tornow additionally serves as cooperative department head at the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Microsystems and Solid State Technologies (EMFT).

Awards

  • Award winner - BMBF junior research group “nanotechnology” competition (2003)
  • “Hans-Jensen” - fellowship, Minerva Society, Munich (1997)

Maximilian Speckbacher, Matthias Jakob, Markus Döblinger, Jonathan G. C. Veinot, Aras Kartouzian, Ueli Heiz, Marc Tornow, Nonvolatile Memristive Switching in Self-assembled Nanoparticle Dimers, ACS Appl. Electron. Mater. 2, 1099 (2020).

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T. Diederichs, G. Pugh, A. Dorey, Y. Xing, J. R. Burns, Q. H. Nguyen, M. Tornow, R. Tampé, S. Howorka, Synthetic protein-conductive membrane nanopores built with DNA, Nature Communications 10, 5018 (2019).

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Cattani-Scholz A, Pedone D, Dubey M, Neppl S, Nickel B, Feulner P, Schwartz J, Abstreiter G, Tornow M, Organophosphonate based PNA-functionalization of silicon nanowires for label-free DNA detection, ACS Nano 2, 1653–1660 (2008).

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Ulrich Rant, Kenji Arinaga, Shozo Fujita, Naoki Yokoyama, Gerhard Abstreiter, and Marc Tornow, Dynamic Electrical Switching of DNA Layers on a Metal Surface, Nano Letters 4, 2441 (2004).

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M. Tornow, D. Weiss, K. v. Klitzing, K. Eberl, D. J. Bergman, Y. M. Strelniker, Anisotropic Magnetoresistance of a Classical Antidot Array, Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 147 (1996).

Abstract