We are a new group at Northwestern University, synthesizing and characterizing layers of correlated quantum oxides.
To us, layers refers to films, membranes, and heterostructures, usually a few nanometers in thickness. Quantum oxides of particular interest are those with exotic magnetic structures, superconductivity, or correlated phenomena such as metal-insulator transitions. Our main synthesis tool is pulsed laser deposition with post-processing soft chemistry. Our characterization takes many complementary forms: Low temperature (magneto)transport, synchrotron x-ray techniques like resonant diffraction and absorption, neutron scattering, muon spin rotation, and scanning probe techniques.
Why thin layers? Because reducing the dimension of a solid material can increase the dimensions of the engineering parameter space!