Workshop 7

Nanoscale phenomena near phase transitions

Thu. May 8, all day
A5000

Organizers: Martin Holt (CNM), Jorg Maser (APS and CNM), and Peter Abbamonte (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

To agenda > Updated 4/10/2008

The understanding and control of the nanoscopic properties of phase transitions in solids remains a great challenge for materials physics and an area of active research. Multiscale phenomena in materials exhibiting such behavior as superconductivity, piezoelectricity, ferromagnetism, or ferroelectricity arise from the complex interaction of these systems with their constituent nanostructure. This local, nanoscale critical phenomena can lead to interesting and unexpected behavior, in some cases dominating the macrostructural properties of the material. The development of new tools, such as nanoscale diffraction microscopy at the CNM hard x-ray nanoprobe, allows the observation of nanoscale critical behavior at previously unattainable spatial resolutions.

The aim of this workshop is to explore recent experimental and theoretical study in nanoscale phenomena of phase transitions. Experimental observation of the behavior of phase transitions in the presence of defects, domain boundaries, local disorder, and reduced dimensionality - and the implications of these results towards the development of modern theories of phase transitions will be discussed.

Agenda