The team of researchers led by the associate professor of materials science and engineering at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute combined their expertise in mathematics and physics to discover new properties of magnetic ferroelectric materials.
A class of defects, called topological defects, can offer a platform to explore a variety of novel phenomena. Room temperature electronicconductivity has been reported at domain walls.
The challenge for the scientific community is the non-destructive three-dimensional image of such structures. Thanks to the BCDI technique, a lens-less X-ray microscope could be used. There are potentially far-reaching applications for the discovery of a lens-less X-ray microscope.
It is possible to produce X-ray photons that are 10 billion times brighter than sunlight. For the first time, we can see small X-ray beams on the surface of solid state materials.
The team observed that there were defects with unexpected phenomena at the boundaries of elastic domains.
Features such as dislocations and global topological defects are almost like a building block in the large-scale applications of these materials. The majority of their behavior is driven by their small size. Things at the small scale dominate what is captured at the large scale.
It could have far-reaching applications.
Fohtung said that their research could lead to using topological defects to form qubits. The building blocks of cell dynamics can be seen as defects. The ability to see defects in their native environments is of paramount importance.
We may be able to understand how the universe was created after the Big bang.
Fohtung said that scientists can study the defects in the nanostructures of materials with very similar symmetry lowering phase transitions to that of the early universe. The rate at which the early universe evolved can be studied in our lab. Many new scientific insights can be offered by topological defects.
Fohtung was part of a research team at Rensselaer that included Xiaowen Shi.
Shekhar Garde, the Dean of Engineering at Rensselaer, said that Dr. Fohtung's research was an example of the blurring of boundaries between engineering of materials and fundamental physics. I'm happy that engineering students and researchers are participating in this research.
More information: Xiaowen Shi et al, Topological defects and ferroelastic twins in ferroelectric nanocrystals: What coherent X-rays can reveal about them, MRS Advances (2022). DOI: 10.1557/s43580-022-00352-w
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