Owing to the unique interface coupling and vertical interfacial strain, vertical heteroepitaxial nanocomposite films can be used to design enhanced and/or novel functionalities. In this talk, I will discuss our efforts to design, synthesize and characterize a variety of epitaxial vertical nanocomposite thin films. Nanopillar feature size has been found to be a critical parameter to control strain, defects and vertical interface density. Using controlled synthesis and advanced probing techniques, we are able to manipulate the nanoscale thin films growth and understand the underlying physics of the emergent phenomena at different vertical nanocomposites. We will use a few vertically aligned epitaxial nanocomposites (such as La0.7Sr0.3MnO3:ZnO, BaTiO3:CoFe2O4, etc.) to illustrate the effect of interface/strain on the functionalities including magnetoresistance and magnetoelectric coupling. The interface and strain are key factors to tune functionalities in nanocomposite thin films.
Dr. Aiping Chen is a staff scientist at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT) at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). CINT is a U.S. Department of Energy funded user facility, which serves national and international users. After receiving his Ph.D degree in 2013 from Texas A&M University, he continued research on complex oxides as a Director’s postdoctoral Fellow at LANL. Since 2017, he is leading the efforts on synthesis and characterization of complex oxide heterostructures and nanocomposites at CINT. His recent research focuses on thin film synthesis, emergent phenomena in quantum materials and electronic devices.