Microwave spectroscopy and materials

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The proposal entitled 'Materials and Microwaves' will support an interdisciplinary program of research on the growth of complex electronic materials and measurement of their physical properties. The materials program builds on our existing strength in the growth of the world's cleanest crystals of the high temperature superconductor YBCO by exploring related transition metal oxides and the means of altering their properties through chemical doping, oxygen ordering and high pressure. This will include a major effort to achieve a high level of crystalline perfection in Tl2201, another prominent member of the family of high temperature superconductors. The evolution of superconductivity as the doping of these materials is altered will be measured with a suite of in-house measurements of the electronic properties of the materials, including a variety of techniques for measuring microwave power absorption, the density of the superfluid, and a new apparatus to measure, for the first time in a high temperature superconductor, the London Hall effect. These will be brought together with a large array of other experimental techniques available through our collaborators in Canada and abroad. In turn the network of collaborations will give us access to other exotic electronic materials which will be studied with a new broadband microwave spectroscopy facility. This new experimental technique will allow us to measure power absorption in the microwave frequency range in samples cooled below 1 degree above absolute zero. At these low temperatures there are numerous physical phenomena and exotic states of matter that are expected to have unusual electronic absorption at correspondingly low frequencies, in the microwave range of the new spectrometer.