Highlights

IRG-D researchers at Princeton University have combined superconducting qubit technology with single spin devices, demonstrating that the microwave field of a superconducting resonator is sensitive to the spin of a single electron. The device may allow two spatially separated electron spins to be coupled, resulting in quantum entanglement.  

In solids, the kinetic energy of an electron generally increases as the square of its momentum. By contrast, in a Topological Insulator such as Bi2Te2Se, electrons on the surface are predicted to be Dirac Fermions for which the energy increases linearly with momentum. In a magnetic field B, the allowed states of an electron are quantized into Landau Levels (LLs). The sequential emptying of occupied LLs in an increasing field leads to quantum

  •“Lewis dots” smartphone app showcased at the New York Technology Meetup, a special University-themed roundup in November 2011

•The ability to design and assemble three-dimensional structures from colloidal particles, such as open structures for photonic band gap applications, is limited by the absence of specific directional bonds.

Metals that are glasses and can be formed like plastics are called bulk metallic glasses (BMG). But not all metals can be glasses and one has to sort through a large number of chemical compositions to find a good BMG. a trial and error processes could take up to a day to decide if a single composition can be molded. Sorting through hundreds of BMGs that are composed of four chemical elements would take up to a year. Now, with CRISP’s new combinatorial deposition system, more than 800 different compositions can be synthesized and characterized in a day.

One avenue to creating new materials with useful electronic properties is to take existing materials and modify their structure at the level of the bonds between the constituent atoms: this is feasible because the distribution of electrons around an atom is sensitive to subtle atomic-scale distortion of its bonds. For this type of approach to succeed, one needs theoretical input on how the atoms should be arranged to achieve some desired electronic distribution.

  Most conventional materials are assembled from inanimate building blocks. We have explored the behavior of soft materials in which constituent energy consuming units that are assembled from animate energy consuming components.  Thousands of these components spontaneously coordinate their microscopic activity to yield novel gels, liquid crystals and emulsions that crawl, flow, stream, spontaneously fracture and self-heal, thus mimicking some of the characteristics of living biological organisms. 

The planar dynamics of a semi-flexible filament anchored at one end and comprised of connected, self-propelled, spheres were predicted using Brownian dynamics simulations and continuum elastic theory theory. For certain parameter ranges the filament undergoes periodic motion. With a clamped anchor, the filament undergoes flagella-like beating (top right), while a pivoting end leads to a steadily rotating coiled conformation (bottom right).

Bridge Program for Physics Graduate Students OSU, CEM and the OSU Department of Physics have established and funded a M.S.‐to‐Ph.D. Bridge Program at OSU; OSU is one of the first sites funded by the American Physical Society Bridge Program. The program seeks to enhance the diversity of qualified applicants to physics Ph.D. programs at OSU and at other universities. The first cohort of students for this 2‐year transitional M.S. program will begin in June 2013.

Researchers Discover the Grail of Graphene Electronics: Semiconducting Graphene (.PDF) The stumbling block to developing graphene electronics has been the inability to produce a semiconducting form of graphene.  Researchers at the Georgia Tech MRSEC have finally found a solution to this elusive goal, graphene bent over SiC steps.  This semiconducting graphene can operate at temperatures above 200 C and is easily scalable to industrial fabrication.