Oxide Molecular Beam Epitaxy Group
(Clockwise from back left) Brookhaven Lab physicists Ivan Bozovic, Anthony Bollinger, and Jie Wu, and postdoctoral researcher Xi He used the molecular beam epitaxy system seen above to synthesize perfect single-crystal thin films made of lanthanum, strontium, oxygen, and copper (LSCO). They brought these superconducting films to the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory to see how the electrical resistance of LSCO in its "strange" metallic state changes under extremely strong magnetic fields.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman (right) and U.S. Under Secretary of Science Raymond L. Orbach (middle) visiting the MBE lab, 2 June 2006. Left: Ivan Bozovic. Back row: BNL Director Sam Aronson (right) and Chemistry Department Chair Alex Harris (left).
U.S. Undersecretary of Science at the Department of Energy Dr. Steven Koonin (right) visiting the MBE lab, 24 Nov 2009. Left: Ivan Bozovic.
The first goal of our research is to address some key open questions in the physics of high-temperature superconductors (HTS):
- What is the dimensionality of the HTS phenomenon?
- What are the spin and charge of free carriers?
- What is the nature of the superconducting transition?
- What is the nature of the overdoped metallic state – a Fermi liquid?
- What is the ‘glue’ (the bosons) responsible for electron pairing?
- What is the mechanism of the Giant Proximity Effect (GPE)?
Our approach to this goal is to:
- utilize Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) synthesis to fabricate atomically smooth HTS thin films, multilayers, superlattices, and combinatorial libraries;
- manufacture various HTS devices and nano-structures and study the (magneto)transport and other physical properties in SIN, SIS, and SNS HTS junctions, nanowires, and nanorings;
- study, in collaboration with the Electron Spectroscopy and Scanning Tunneling Microscopy groups, ARPES and STM spectra of various HTS cuprates synthesized by oxide MBE
Our second and ultimate research goal is to discover, or artificially assemble, new and superior HTS materials
