This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). Very small physical systems, where one or more dimension is reduced below 100 nanometers, often show dramatically different behavior than larger objects. Though research into this nanoscale regime is very active and has already revealed new phenomena and promising new technologies, much remains unexplored. The main research goal of this Faculty Early Career Award is to use new and unique methods to explore the thermal properties of nanoscaled systems and novel materials. These properties provide valuable information on the electronic, vibrational and magnetic excitations in a system, but are traditionally difficult to measure. This project focuses on new micro- and nanomachined tools for these measurements, and will allow an important view into the behavior of these small systems that could impact areas from heat management in ever-shrinking computer chips to the development of new information storage technologies. Integration of education with this work is planned via three main tasks: continued use and new development of interactive teaching techniques in both introductory and advanced physics courses, hands-on education of students in the laboratory environment, and outreach to local secondary educators by offering an intensive lab-based summer short course.
This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). The main research goal of this Faculty Early Career Award is to deepen our understanding of electronic, vibrational, and magnetic excitations in small structures and novel materials by direct measurements of the thermal properties of these systems. Continued advances in the patterning and manipulation of matter at small length scales has lead to fundamental studies that reveal that the electronic, vibrational, and magnetic excitations in these tiny systems can behave much differently than in the bulk. Though the exciting regime where one or more sample dimensions is reduced below $100$ nanometers is being very actively explored, measurements of thermal properties of these tiny systems remain challenging. This award supports measurements of thermal conductivity, thermopower, and specific heat of systems ranging from nanowire arrays to bulk single crystals that allow novel systematic studies of physics ranging from electron-phonon interactions in small structures, to thermal transport via magnons in small spin systems, to the cross-over from diffuse to ballistic phonon transport, to the magnetic interactions and magnetic entropy in spin systems fabricated from nanomagnetic elements. Integration of education with this work is planned via three main tasks: continued use and new development of interactive teaching techniques in both introductory physics and condensed matter physics courses, hands-on education of students in the laboratory environment, and outreach to local secondary educators by offering an intensive lab-based summer short course on condensed matter and nanoscale physics.
