New paradigms for designer materials

该计划将采用最先进的数值模型和复杂的理论方法，推动新一代材料的发展，并培养下一代能够创造这些材料的科学家。在过去的几十年里，在纳米尺度上雕刻材料的技术取得了惊人的进步。在许多实际方面，这些令人印象深刻的成就已经超出了我们充分发挥其潜力的能力，仅仅是因为它们为探索开辟了巨大的参数空间。从材料物理和/或技术应用的角度来看，缺乏的是一种准确的方法来预测哪种设计和哪些组件组合最有可能是有趣的，以及用于分析实验数据的理论基础设施的可用性。该计划将填补这一空白，并为材料物理学中出现的有前途和令人兴奋的新能力建立预测基础设施。通过该计划，HQP将学习开发和使用数值技术和理论工具来研究如何在使用二维和三维纳米光刻技术可能创建的铁材料中出现可控功能。决定集体材料性质的基本物理，对各种各样的应用都很有用，将研究和理解具有新颖和有趣的涌现性质的系统。HQP项目的结果将激励新的实验研究，并为正在进行的实验研究提供支持。专家们将接受预测、多尺度模型创建方面的培训，并深入了解原子级特性如何用于产生各种电磁功能。所开发的模型将用于磁性元件的纳米图案阵列，其磁性可以受到图案的限制，并通过外部磁场和电场的应用而改变。这些阵列的新功能将出现在其GHz和THz频率的电磁特性中，这将对信息和通信技术中的节能设备设计非常重要。意想不到的特性和现象有望从这些系统设计中的竞争相互作用中出现。在这方面，这些材料也将提供新的模型系统，通过这些模型系统，HQP将能够探索凝聚态物质和材料物理学中的开放基本问题，如几何挫折、远离平衡的动力学和介观量子现象。

This programme will employ advanced state-of-the-art numerical models, and sophisticated theoretical approaches, to drive forward a new generation of materials and train the next generation of scientists able to create them. Over the past decades there have been striking advances in the technology to sculpt materials on nanometre lengthscales. In many practical respects, these impressive achievements have outstripped our ability to realise their full potential simply because of the enormous parameter space for exploration that they have opened. What is lacking is an accurate way of predicting which design and what combination of components is most likely to be interesting from a materials physics and/or technological application of view, and availability of a theoretical infrastructure for the analysis of experimental data. This programme will fill this gap, and build a predictive infrastructure for the promising and intellectually exciting new capabilities emerging from materials physics.Through this programme HQP will learn to develop and use numerical techniques and theoretical tools to examine how controllable functionality can emerge in ferroic materials that are possible to create using two and three dimensional nanolithography. The fundamental physics determining collective material properties, useful for a wide variety of applications, will be investigated and understood for systems with novel and interesting emergent properties. Results from HQP projects will motivate new experimental investigations and provide support for on-going experimental studies. Experts will be trained in the creation of predictive, multi-scale models and achieve an in-depth understanding of how atomic level properties can be used to produce a variety of electromagnetic functionality. The models developed will be used for nanopatterned arrays of magnetic elements whose magnetic properties can be constrained by the patterning, and changed by application of external magnetic and electric fields. The new functionality of these arrays will appear in their electromagnetic properties at GHz and THz frequencies and will be important for power efficient device design in information and communication technologies. Unexpected properties and phenomena are expected to emerge from competing interactions engineered into the design of these systems. In this regards, these materials will also provide new model systems through which HQP will be able to explore open fundamental problems in condensed matter and materials physics such as geometrical frustration, dynamics far from equilibrium, and mesoscopic quantum phenomena.