Rate My Professor André Vantomme

André Vantomme is a full professor in the Faculty of Science at KU Leuven, affiliated with the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Quantum Solid-State Physics group. He earned his PhD from KU Leuven in 1991, followed by a two-year postdoctoral position at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. Returning to KU Leuven, he obtained tenure in 2000 and was promoted to full professor in 2007. Between 2010 and 2012, he chaired the Research Council at KU Leuven. He is a member of LIMNI, the KU Leuven Institute for Micro- and Nanoscale Integration. Vantomme's research focuses on connecting the electric, magnetic, and optical functionality of materials to their atomic-scale structure through advanced characterization techniques. He utilizes ion beams for material analysis and modification, atom probe tomography, and hyperfine interactions. Experiments are performed at in-house facilities and complemented by access to large-scale facilities like ISOLDE at CERN and ESRF. His work targets applications in nanoelectronics and quantum technology, including defects and impurities in semiconductors and insulators such as doping of wide-bandgap semiconductors and quantum color centers in diamond, thin film growth mechanisms for metallic films in semiconductor devices, and magneto-electric composite materials exhibiting voltage-controlled magnetic anisotropy.

Vantomme has produced over 200 peer-reviewed publications. Key contributions include the "Observation of the radiative decay of the 229Th nuclear clock isomer" (Nature, 2023), "Experimental validation of TRIDYN self-sputtering simulations" (SciPost Physics, 2026), "Growth and stability of Pt germanides on Ge and GeSn substrates" (Acta Materialia, 2025), "The Core/Shell Interface in InP/ZnSe Colloidal Quantum Dots" (Chemistry of Materials, 2025), and earlier work on "Thin film growth of semiconducting Mg2Si by codeposition" (Applied Physics Letters, 1997). His research topics also cover growth mechanisms of thin films and low-dimensional structures, surface structures, doping of semiconductors via ion implantation, electrical and optical responses of dopants, magnetic properties of nanostructured systems, and ion beam analysis.