Physicist Jak Chakhalian at the University of Arkansas has been conferred with the highest award bestowed on individual researchers by the Army Research Laboratory. The grant will allow Chakhalian to research on nanomaterials featuring rationally pre-determined characteristics.
The nanomaterials called topological insulators will feature magnetic and superconductivity qualities in minimal atomic layers. The combination of all the properties in one material could help develop topological quantum computers, which could help unravel complicated encryption codes and collate data in super seconds.
According to Chakhalian, the research could help understand electrons that move in insulators and metals at the nanoscale. The Army Research Laboratory is funding the program across five years.
Chakhalian, associate professor of physics in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, and his team have discovered a method to study atomic orbitals and say their alteration takes place at the interface between a ferromagnet and a superconductor, which is at a high temperature. This could lead to design development of nanoscale superconducting materials. Chakhalian said bismuth telluride is an insulator in a semiconductor but on the surface, it turns into a conductor. It could conduct within one atomic layer even disordered crystals existing inside. This material resembles graphene.
Chakhalian is with the University of Arkansas Institute for Nanoscience and Engineering and holds the Charles E. and Clydene Scharlau Endowed Professorship in Chemistry
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