Nanomechanical Sensing Using Spins in Diamond.

Nanomechanical sensors and quantum nanosensors are two rapidly developing technologies that have diverse interdisciplinary applications in biological and chemical analysis and microscopy. For example, nanomechanical sensors based upon nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) have demonstrated chip-scale mass spectrometry capable of detecting single macromolecules, such as proteins. Quantum nanosensors based upon electron spins of negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond have demonstrated diverse modes of nanometrology, including single molecule magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

Switching modes in easy and hard axis magnetic reversal in a self-assembled antidot array.

We study the reversal mechanisms in a self-assembled, hexagonally ordered Fe antidot array with a period of 200 nm and an antidot diameter of 100 nm which was prepared by polystyrene nanosphere lithography. Direction-dependent information in such a self-assembled sample is obtained by measuring the anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) through constrictions processed by focused ion beam milling in nearest neighbor and next nearest neighbor directions. We show that such an originally integral method can be used to investigate the strong in-plane anisotropy introduced by the antidot lattice.

A disconfirming strategy is not necessarily better than a confirming strategy.

College students were presented with 4 events to be explained. Each event was accompanied by either a target explanation or a target and an alternative, and all explanations were causal mechanistic. For each event, participants were also presented with 12 pieces of information.