03-27-2019, 12:59 AM
http://www.sci-news.com/physics/stable-s...07028.html
According to a new study, published in the journal Nature Materials, an ultrafast laser pulse plus ‘frustration’ resulted in a new state of matter — a ‘supercrystal.’
They accomplished this by ‘frustrating’ the system — not allowing the material to do what it wants to do, which is to allow it to minimize its energy fully without constraints.
The scientists did this by using single atomic layers of two materials, lead titanate and strontium titanate, stacked in alternating layers on top of each other to build up a 3D structure.
The team grew these layers on top of a crystal substrate whose crystals were intermediate in size between the two layered materials. This provided a second level of frustration, as the strontium titanate layer tried to stretch to conform with the crystal structure of the substrate, and the lead titanate had to compress to conform to it. This put the whole system into a delicate but frustrated state with multiple phases randomly distributed in the volume.
At this point, the researchers zapped the material with a laser pulse, which dumps free charges in the material, adding extra electrical energy to the system, driving it into a supercrystal.
Well, this sounds intriguing - but, sadly, I've only found two articles on it, and neither is really that great. The one I linked above is a bit too technical for most audiences, while the second (from Live Science) attempted to simplify it, but didn't seem to do a particularly good job of it .
Still, they sound like a very exotic state of matter - and I gather that they managed to get it to persist under normal, room-temperature conditions . That makes me wonder: could it be practical to apply these in the real world, and if so, what for?
According to a new study, published in the journal Nature Materials, an ultrafast laser pulse plus ‘frustration’ resulted in a new state of matter — a ‘supercrystal.’
They accomplished this by ‘frustrating’ the system — not allowing the material to do what it wants to do, which is to allow it to minimize its energy fully without constraints.
The scientists did this by using single atomic layers of two materials, lead titanate and strontium titanate, stacked in alternating layers on top of each other to build up a 3D structure.
The team grew these layers on top of a crystal substrate whose crystals were intermediate in size between the two layered materials. This provided a second level of frustration, as the strontium titanate layer tried to stretch to conform with the crystal structure of the substrate, and the lead titanate had to compress to conform to it. This put the whole system into a delicate but frustrated state with multiple phases randomly distributed in the volume.
At this point, the researchers zapped the material with a laser pulse, which dumps free charges in the material, adding extra electrical energy to the system, driving it into a supercrystal.
Well, this sounds intriguing - but, sadly, I've only found two articles on it, and neither is really that great. The one I linked above is a bit too technical for most audiences, while the second (from Live Science) attempted to simplify it, but didn't seem to do a particularly good job of it .
Still, they sound like a very exotic state of matter - and I gather that they managed to get it to persist under normal, room-temperature conditions . That makes me wonder: could it be practical to apply these in the real world, and if so, what for?
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