MRI: Development of a High-Pressure Laser Floating Zone Furnace

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Advances in information technology, energy, and many other fields rely upon the development and characterization of materials with desirable mechanical, electrical, magnetic, and thermal properties. Investigators who first synthesize high-quality, bulk single crystals of novel materials are in an optimal position to conduct definitive studies of their fundamental properties. Moreover, these investigators are also well positioned to facilitate further development of these materials toward applications in advanced technologies. This project develops a high-pressure laser floating zone furnace, not commercially available, capable of growing single crystals of novel materials that cannot be grown any other way. The high-pressure laser floating zone furnace will be a part of Rice’s Shared Equipment Authority and therefore have a broad user base from Rice University and the extended research community in and around Houston, Texas. In addition to training undergraduate and graduate students in the art of growing single crystals using the furnace, the successful execution of this project will open areas of research currently not possible for faculty and students. These activities will broaden the avenues of research in solid-state science and will provide new opportunities for discoveries of novel phenomena in single crystals of quantum materials.Conventional laser floating zone furnaces are powerful tools used to grow high-quality single crystals of oxides, intermetallics, carbides, and silicides, as long as the melting temperature is below ~2,800°C, but the growth chamber is limited up to 300 bar gas pressure. Growing single crystals of more complex materials, however, requires special capabilities, particularly the use of high pressure in the growth chamber. This is because the boiling point of a liquid is the temperature at which its vapor pressure is equal to the pressure of the gas around it. Increasing the gas pressure to 1000 bar inside the chamber will dramatically enhance the opportunities to stabilize the melt, and therefore allowing growth of single crystals not possible with conventional laser floating zone furnace. Recently, the investigator at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), developed a novel design for a high-pressure laser floating zone furnace for operational pressures up to 1000 bars of gas pressure. The objective of this project is to continue this innovation through the design and construction of a next-generation high-pressure laser floating zone furnace at Rice University; it will be the first of its kind in Texas and the southern U.S. and will represent a continued advance in high-pressure floating zone technology for advanced crystal growth. With the development of an improved high-pressure laser floating zone furnace under 1000 bars of gas pressure, the investigators will be able to obtain entire new phase parameter regimes and grow single crystals not possible with a commercial instrument. The proposed furnace will be operated and maintained by Rice University’s Shared Equipment Authority, where it will be easily accessible not only to Rice researchers but also to researchers throughout Texas and the southern U.S., thereby significantly broadening the capacity to advance research in materials synthesis.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.