The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded NIU
Physicist Zhili Xiao a three-year grant totaling $486,000 to continue his investigations
of superconductivity at the nanoscale.
Using high tech equipment at Argonne National Laboratory, Xiao's group is
developing methods to synthesize a new class of free-standing superconducting
nanowires and nanoribbons that are stable in atmosphere.
"This would enable the exploration of superconducting properties and potential
applications of individual nanostructures," Xiao said. Other members of
his current research team include postdoctoral associate Jiong Hua and Ph.D.
candidates Sevda Avci, Qiong Luo, Xiaoqiao Zeng and Sriharsha Panuganti.
Superconductivity is a fascinating phenomenon that has drawn intense interest
in the scientific and technological communities.
Many materials, including pure metals, alloys and compounds, behave as superconductors
when cooled to below certain temperatures. Superconductors conduct electricity
with no resistance, or no energy dissipation, and superconducting electromagnets
are used in such devices as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines, particle
accelerators and magnetically-levitated trains.
Nanotechnology aims to develop tiny devices made of components no bigger than
100 nanometers. By comparison, the thickness of a single human hair equals about
100,000 nanometers. It will be advantageous to use superconducting nanowires
to connect these devices.
"In electrically activated nanodevices of the future, the use of superconducting
interconnects will be highly desirable, because they would circumvent the damaging
heat produced by energy dissipation," Xiao said.
Argonne boasts world-class research facilities that allow scientists to study
the universe at the nanolevel, which can't be observed with traditional high
powered optic microscopes. The U.S. Department of Energy had previously provided
Xiao's team with $220,500 for the development and study of superconducting nanowires.
"The objective of this renewal proposal is to continue our successful
efforts," Xiao said.
Xiao holds a joint appointment as a professor in the Department of Physics
at NIU and a physicist in the Materials Science Division at Argonne. He also
is an associate of the Institute for NanoScience, Engineering and Technology
at NIU.
In addition to this DOE funded project, Xiao's group is pursuing new phenomena
in shape-controlled mesoscopic superconducting crystals. That project is funded
by the National Science Foundation ($300,000).
Xiao and his co-workers also have been developing sensors based on nanotechnology.
R&D Magazine named an ultra-fast hydrogen sensor developed by the team as
one of the world's top 100 scientific and technological innovations of 2005.
Posted September 11th, 2009
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