Investigating the effects of antiferromagnetic order upon Tc in superconducting spintronic devices

作为材料科学与冶金系器件材料组的一员，我的研究将在新兴的超导自旋电子学领域进行。最近发现在磁性和超导系统的界面处存在自旋三重态库珀对，并且它们具有自旋极化的能力。人们希望远程自旋极化超电流可以用于自旋电子学中，作为当前自旋电子学应用中所见的高耗散自旋极化电流的替代品，并有可能在长期内替代传统的基于晶体管的硅电子学。这将需要大量的研究和设备的开发，允许操纵和控制系统中的自旋，磁性和超导状态。最初，我的研究将集中在不同的表面自旋结构的外延薄膜反铁磁体的生长。然后，我将尝试构建由反铁磁层和超导层组成的器件，以研究在这两种材料之间的界面处出现的现象，特别是探索超导体的临界温度在与各种反铁磁表面接触时如何变化，这将表明对系统超导状态的某种控制。"

As a member of the Device Materials Group in the department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, my research will be conducted in the newly emerging field of superconducting spintronics. The existence of spin-triplet Cooper pairs at the interfaces of magnetic and superconducting systems and their ability to be spin-polarized has recently been discovered. It is hoped that long-range spin-polarized supercurrents may be used in spintronics as an alternative to the highly dissipative spin-polarized currents seen in current spintronic applications, and potentially as a replacement for traditional transistor-based silicon electronics in the long term. This will require significant investigation and development of devices that allow the manipulation and control of the spin, magnetic and superconducting states in a system. Initially, my research will focus on the growth of epitaxial thin-film antiferromagnets with differing surface-spin structures. I will then attempt to construct devices consisting of antiferromagnetic and superconducting layers in order to investigate the phenomena that emerge at the interface between these two types of material, and particularly to probe how the critical temperature of the superconductor changes when in contact with the various antiferromagnetic surfaces, which would indicate some control over the superconducting state of the system."