Spin Dynamics of a Solid-State Qubit in Proximity to a Superconductor.

A broad effort is underway to understand and harness the interaction between superconductors and spin-active color centers with an eye on hybrid quantum devices and novel imaging modalities of superconducting materials. Most work, however, overlooks the interplay between either system and the environment created by the color center host. Here we use a diamond scanning probe to investigate the spin dynamics of a single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center proximal to a superconducting film.

On the Localization of Persistent Currents Due to Trapped Magnetic Flux at the Stacking Faults of Graphite at Room Temperature.

Granular superconductivity at high temperatures in graphite can emerge at certain two-dimensional (2D) stacking faults (SFs) between regions with twisted (around the c-axis) or untwisted crystalline regions with Bernal (ABA…) and/or rhombohedral (ABCABCA…) stacking order. One way to observe experimentally such 2D superconductivity is to measure the frozen magnetic flux produced by a permanent current loop that remains after removing an external magnetic field applied normal to the SFs. Magnetic force microscopy was used to localize and characterize such a permanent current path found in one natural graphite sample out of ∼50 measured graphite samples of different origins.

Nanometers-Thick Ferromagnetic Surface Produced by Laser Cutting of Diamond.

In this work, we demonstrate that cutting diamond crystals with a laser (532 nm wavelength, 0.5 mJ energy, 200 ns pulse duration at 15 kHz) produced a ≲20 nm thick surface layer with magnetic order at room temperature. We measured the magnetic moment of five natural and six CVD diamond crystals of different sizes, nitrogen contents and surface orientations with a SQUID magnetometer.

Publisher Correction: Atomic-scale engineering of ferroelectric-ferromagnetic interfaces of epitaxial perovskite films for functional properties.

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML version of this paper. The error has been fixed in the paper.

Atomic-scale engineering of ferroelectric-ferromagnetic interfaces of epitaxial perovskite films for functional properties.

Besides epitaxial mismatch that can be accommodated by lattice distortions and/or octahedral rotations, ferroelectric-ferromagnetic interfaces are affected by symmetry mismatch and subsequent magnetic ordering. Here, we have investigated La Sr MnO (LSMO) samples with varying underlying unit cells (uc) of BaTiO (BTO) layer on (001) and (110) oriented substrates in order to elucidate the role of symmetry mismatch. Lattice mismatch for 3 uc of BTO and symmetry mismatch for 10 uc of BTO, both associated with local MnO octahedral distortions of the (001) LSMO within the first few uc, are revealed by scanning transmission electron microscopy.

The frequency-dependent AC photoresistance behavior of ZnO thin films grown on different sapphire substrates.

Zinc oxide (ZnO) thin films were grown by pulsed layer deposition under an N atmosphere at low pressures on a- and r-plane sapphire substrates. Structural studies using X-ray diffraction confirmed that all films had a wurtzite phase. ZnO thin films on a- and r-plane sapphire have grown with orientations along the [0002] and [112[combining macron]0] directions, respectively.

Electrical properties of ZnO single nanowires.

We have investigated the electrical resistance R(T) of ZnO nanowires of ≈ 400 nm diameter as a function of temperature, between 30 K and 300 K, and frequency in the range 40 Hz to 30 MHz. The measurements were done on the as-prepared and after low-energy proton implantation at room temperature. The temperature dependence of the resistance of the wire, before proton implantation, can be well described by two processes in parallel.

Detection of Defect-Induced Magnetism in Low-Dimensional ZnO Structures by Magnetophotocurrent.

The detection of defect-induced magnetic order in single low-dimensional oxide structures is in general difficult because of the relatively small yield of magnetically ordered regions. In this work, the effect of an external magnetic field on the transient photocurrent measured after light irradiation on different ZnO samples at room temperature is studied. It has been found that a magnetic field produces a change in the relaxation rate of the transient photocurrent only in magnetically ordered ZnO samples.

Conducting behavior of chalcopyrite-type CuGaS₂ crystals under visible light.

Millimeter size high quality crystals of CuGaS2 were grown by chemical vapor transport. The highly ordered chalcopyrite structure is confirmed by X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy. According to energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy the composition of the crystals is very close to the formula CuGaS2.