Nanostructures: Confinement, Proximity and Induced Effects

Ivan Schuller, Physics Department, UCSD

Abstract:

Physics in confined geometries is one of the most active areas of research in Solid State and Materials Physics. The extensive activity in this field is driven by the fact that physical length scales are close to structural sizes, which can be controlled using modern thin film and lithography techniques. In addition, a number of applications in the areas of information storage and sensors have moved basic research results into the application area in a very short period of time.

I will describe a variety of representative basic research results, which illustrate some of the exciting and novel results when magnetic and/or superconducting materials are confined into small dimensions. Interesting effects are observed when these dimensions are comparable to magnetic length scales such as dipolar, exchange, and domain sizes and superconducting length scales such as the penetration and coherence lengths. Particular experiments will relate to confinement effects due to quantum mechanical quantization, a variety of proximity effects in which dissimilar materials have strong effects on each other and phenomena which are induced by external means such as electric and magnetic fields, light, etc.

Work supported by the US-DOE, AFOSR, and NSF

Biography:

Prof. Ivan K. Schuller, of the Physics Department and the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) at the University of California San Diego, is a Solid State Physicist.  A Fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the Belgian, Chilean, and Spanish Academies of Sciences, he has won many awards such as the American Physical Society’s Wheatley (1999) and Adler Awards (2003) and the German von Humbold prize (2002).  Recently he has received the Materials Research Society Medal (2004), the Lawrence Award from the US Department of Energy (2005), and received a Honoris Causa Doctorate (2005) from Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain. He has published more than 450 technical papers and 20 patents, has given more than 250 invited lectures at international conferences and is one of the 100 most cited physicists (out of 500,000) in the last 15 years.  He has given numerous public lectures in museums and TV about science to young and old.

His artistic activities are centered on TV and theater. On UC-TV Guestbook, Prof. Schuller has interviewed notable scientists such as Nobel Prize Laureates, Profs. Sir Harold Kroto, and Walter Kohn. He also produced and moderated the Copenhagen Event in which scientists, actors and historian discussed the famous play Copenhagen by Michael Frayn.  Recently he coproduced a prize winning (5 EMMYs and 2 TELLYs) movie titled “When things get small” on Nanoscience (http://www.ucsd.tv/getsmall/). In addition, he has established a TV production enterprise “Not too serious labs” in collaboration with the TV producer Rich Wargo dedicated to popularize science.  He produced the play Copenhagen of Michael Frayn in Chile (http://ischuller.ucsd.edu/copenhague/) and has appeared as a guest lecturer in the Magic Theater production of the Quantum Leaps (http://www.corante.com/brainwaves/archives/2005/07/).  Based on his earlier theatre studies in Chile, the “hilarious Prof. Schuller” believes that being a physicist is “as much fun, but way easier than being an actor”.