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QMC member and NIST Researcher Nick Butch has been elected to the APS 2023 Fellowship. This program recognizes members who have made exceptional contributions in physics research, important applications of physics, leadership in or service to physics, or significant contributions to physics education. Each year, no more than one half of one percent of the Society membership is recognized by their peers for election to Fellow of the American Physical Society. Nick was nomiated to the DCMP Unit and is one of 14 elected fellows -- congrats Nick!!
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A team of UMD researchers led by Carlos Ocampo (MSE and IREAP) and including Ichiro Takeuchi (MSE) have been awarded a $2 million grant to support the discovery of new materials for high-performance, energy-efficient and sustainable semiconductors for electronic and optical computational devices, using machine learning to predict unexplored “phase change materials” (PCM) that the researchers can combine, synthesize, test and later integrate into electronic and photonic computational devices. More information can be found here.
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QMC is hosting its 7th annual Fundamentals of Quantum Materials Winter School, to be held at the University of Maryland, January 15-19, 2024. This school, (sponsored by the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, ICAM, and NSF), is aimed at providing fundamental training to our current and future generations of Quantum Materials scientists in synthesis and characterization techniques. It will bring together senior and junior scientists to address topics at the forefront of current research into quantum materials, while also providing pedagogical background and practical training for junior scientists. With an interdisciplinary and diverse crowd, including physicists, chemists, and materials scientists, participants will gain basic functional knowledge of how to plan and carry out synthesis relevant to the study of quantum materials and will have a unique opportunity to interact with some of the top researchers in the field while networking with fellow peers. This year's school is focused on High Pressure Synthesis and Measurements, and will include a combination of fundamental materials synthesis instruction as well as lectures on experimental techniques and practices from an impressive list of invited speakers. The school will be followed by a one-day Workshop focused on a current topic in quantum materials research, covering both experimental and theoretical work presented by a list of prominent scientists in the field. School students are expected to attend both events. Applications can be submitted via web at https://fqm.physics.umd.edu.
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False alarms sounded recently about the discovery of a room temperature superconductor by way of a material called LK-99. Since then, there has been a surge in interest in the topic: what exactly is a room temperature superconductor? How would one change our lives? And just how close are we to discovering one? Stay Tuned in Brief podcaster and former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara speaks with physicist and superconductor expert Dr. Richard Greene of QMC. Podcast link
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Two QMC collaborations - with the Madhavan group at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign and the Davis group at Cornell University, University College Cork and Oxford University - have found striking instances of charge- and pair-density wave orders in the topological spin-triplet superconductor UTe2 using scanning tunneling microscopy techniques. The Madhavan group, who previously discovered chiral superconductivity in this material, unveiled an unusual kind of charge-density-wave order that is closely associated with superconductivity and is sensitive to magnetic fields. The Davis group used a superconducting Nb tip to identify the presence of three pair density waves along the same directions as the Urbana charge density waves. Read more in Nature News & Views article "Widespread pair density waves spark superconductor search"