By precisely controlling the surface composition of thin oxide films, films can be switched from a metal to an insulator. Atomic-scale control of the surface is achieved using molecular beams of atoms (the molecular beam epitaxy growth method).
By precisely controlling the surface composition of thin oxide films, films can be switched from a metal to an insulator. Atomic-scale control of the surface is achieved using molecular beams of atoms (the molecular beam epitaxy growth method).
New property of electrons may lead to novel electronic devices
Topological insulators (TIs) are a novel class of quantum materials characterized by an insulating bulk and metallic conducting states at the surface. This metallic behavior however, can be changed by applying a magnetic field or, equivalently, by coupling the TI to a ferromagnetic material.
The thermal properties of oxides are of interest for a number of important applications, including thermoelectrics, thermal barrier coatings, memristors, and fuel cells. MIT MRSEC researchers demonstrated, for the first time, the controllable impact of oxygen defects on the thermal conductivity of a reducible oxide.
Nearly 300 postdoctoral researchers and graduate students attended masterclasses on the visual communication of materials science and engineering between October 2013 and January 2014.
Topological superconductors are a distinct form of matter that is predicted to host boundary Majorana fermions. These quasi-particles are the emergent condensed matter analogs of the putative elementary spin-1/2 particles originally proposed by Ettore Majorana in the 1930’s with the intriguing property of being their own