Researchers Find Way to Look at Atomic Orbitals

Researcher Jacques Chakhalian and his colleagues have found a novel way to “look” at atomic orbitals, and have directly shown for the first time that they change substantially when interacting at the interface of a ferromagnet and a high-temperature superconductor.

This finding opens up a new way of designing nanoscale superconducting materials and fundamentally changes scientific convention, which suggests that only electron spin and atomic charge — not atomic orbitals — influence the properties of superconducting nanostructures. It also has implications for interfaces between other complex oxide materials.

Chakhalian and his colleagues have published their findings online at the Science Express Web site, published by the journal Science, on Thursday, Oct. 11.

See http://www.sciencexpress.org, and also http://www.aaas.org.

 

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