Many future technologies may depend upon the magnetic properties of thin films. Disorder in the constituent parts can affect the usefulness of a particular material for a particular application. This individual investigator award supports a project seeking to gain insight into the affect of disorder on the transition from a material exhibiting no magnetic order, to one that has magnetic order. Although focused on increasing our fundamental understanding, this research may provide the intellectual infrastructure relevant to future devices. These studies provide excellent training to the students involved. Not only will they learn advance fundamental concepts, but they will learn experimental techniques that will help them compete in the technological workforce of the future, whether they pursue careers in academia, industry, or government laboratories.
This individual investigator award will support a project to investigate the effect of disorder on classical and quantum phase transitions in magnetic films. The project will address issues such as how disorder affects the magnetic transition temperature and magnetic domain wall roughness and pinning in Pd(1-x)Co(x) films. Magnetic force microscopy will be used for these studies. In addition electrical transport and noise measurements will be used to investigate quantum fluctuations due to size quantization and doping near the quantum critical point in Cr(1-x)V(x) films. Such questions are of fundamental interest, yet are also likely to be relevant to future technologies such as spintronics. These studies provide excellent training to the students involved. Not only will they learn advance fundamental concepts, but they will learn experimental techniques that will help them compete in the technological workforce of the future, whether they pursue careers in academia, industry, or government laboratories.
