This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
NON-TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION: Nanomagnetism is one of the most active areas in science with a wide range of fundamental scientific problems as well as emerging technologies. Many magnetic devices are still in their infancy and a thorough understanding of the underlying materials and electronic properties and their effect on device performance will be essential for future technologies. The proposal explores important underlying structural, magnetic, and transport properties of new class of magnetic nanowires. This research will address fundamental issues of nanowire synthesis and magnetism at the nanoscale and train undergraduate and graduate students in important areas of nanoscience
TECHNICAL DETAILS: The proposal explores underlying structural, magnetic, and transport properties of transition-metal oxide and core-shell metal/oxide nanowires (NWs). The NWs will be grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) resulting in single-crystal NWs of various phases and core-shell structures. The research will initially focus on understanding the growth and structural properties of NWs of transition metals and their oxides, and the formation of various core-shell structures. This will include a survey the CVD NW growth of the magnetic transition metals (Cr, Mn, Fe, Co and Ni) and their oxides with particular focus on understanding and controlling the phase formation, nucleation, and morphology. The research will include full structural and magnetic characterization of the NWs using advance electron and x-ray characterization techniques. The latter part of the proposal will focus on integrating these NWs into spin-transport devices to elucidate magnetic properties of composite materials at the nanoscale and to determine their potential for novel device applications. This research will address fundamental issues of a new class of metal-oxide composite NWs, determine their impact on future technologies, and train undergraduate and graduate students in materials synthesis, exploiting national user facilities for materials characterization, and the application of new materials to nanotechnology.
