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news release:
New Crystal Growth Program to Enhance FSU's
Materials Research Efforts
Tallahassee, FL, September 18:
Florida State University already has an excellent reputation for its various
efforts to design, prepare and characterize new materials for research and
commercial uses. Now that reputation is about to be burnished even further as
scientists at the National
High Magnetic Field Laboratory ramp up a program for growing exotic crystals
that possess special properties.
Chris Wiebe heads up the magnet
lab’s Quantum Materials Group, the centerpiece of which is a new,
state-of-the-art image furnace capable of growing crystals such as magnetic
oxides and high-temperature superconductors.
Access to these samples — the
demand for which currently far outstrips the supply — and the ability to create
completely new ones will give the lab and its research partners a distinct
advantage.
“Crystal growth programs in North
America typically have lagged behind those of other countries,” said Wiebe, an
assistant professor of physics at FSU. “We can’t get enough good samples because
the Japanese are so far ahead of us.”
Wiebe said purchasing the image
furnace is part of the magnet lab’s commitment to getting the samples needed to
push the U.S. back to the forefront of sample development.
The image furnace looks a bit
like a refrigerator with the housing for a car engine inside. At the core of the
furnace, two rods meet, spinning slowly in opposite directions. These rods are
created from scratch at the magnet lab, and different combinations rods and
materials yield different crystals. In the furnace, the rods are superheated
with refracted light, and that heat acts as the catalyst for the reaction that
forms crystals with special properties.
The “car engine” appearance of
the furnace is lent by the water-cooled shell that, even with the furnace
operating, is cool enough to touch. This shell enables researchers to place a
video camera directly in front of the action, so that as the rods meet and
crystals are formed, the success or failure of each effort can be monitored in
real time.
Creating sophisticated crystals
isn’t as easy as following a recipe and putting in the right ingredients;
mastery of techniques is paramount. Combining the different materials and
techniques is creative, demanding work, and the group already has met with
success, reproducing a difficult-to-make superconducting crystal first developed
by Japanese researchers. Interest in the crystal has spawned collaboration
between the magnet lab and chemists in FSU’s Center for Materials Research &
Technology (MARTECH,
www.martech.fsu.edu).
The image furnace also will
benefit the lab’s magnet development program, because the crystals, such as the
high-temperature superconductors, are materials that can be used to create the
powerful magnets for which the lab is best known.
Wiebe said he expects that the
furnace eventually will be incorporated into the lab’s user program, leading to
collaborations with physicists, chemists and engineers at other labs and
universities around the world.
With the addition of the image
furnace, the magnet lab becomes one of only a few science facilities in the
world capable of providing high-quality samples to eagerly awaiting experimental
physicists.
“We’re joining an elite club,”
Wiebe said.
The $180,000, Japanese-built
furnace is funded jointly through start-up funds contributed by Wiebe and
scholar scientist Luis Balicas, as well as through the National Science
Foundation and the FSU Office of Research. Wiebe’s team is rounded out by
postdoc Haidong Zhou, and students John Janik, Ben Conner, and Brandon Vogt.
The National High Magnetic Field
Laboratory develops and operates state-of-the-art, high-magnetic-field
facilities that faculty and visiting scientists and engineers use for
interdisciplinary research. The laboratory is sponsored by the NSF and the state
of Florida and is the only facility of its kind in the United States. To learn
more, please visit
http://www.magnet.fsu.edu
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