Michael Widom and his colleagues showed what happens at the grain boundaries of one particular alloy of the metals nickel and bismuth that makes it brittle in their paper published in Science. Using advanced electron microscopes, Widom’s collaborators at Lehigh University scrutinized these microscopic grain boundaries at an atomic level. In a "very heroic experimental program" they discovered that when grains met, the bismuth and nickel atoms realigned into lattices to form layered superstructures at the grain boundaries. These superstructures had previously been thought to exist only rarely in some alloys. Finding it at many different boundaries led the team to conclude that these superstructures are probably much more common than many people had thought. Continue reading

Owing to high surface to volume ratios and chemical potential, nanoparticles possess unique optical, electrical, and thermal properties, which constitute the basis of novel applications in sensing, catalysis, nanoelectronics, bio-tagging etc. Despite the great advances in the synthesis, the total structure determination of nanoclusters still remains to be a major challenge. Recently Hyung J. Kim and their colleagues have reported the synthesis and crystal structure of a nanocluster composed of 23 silver atoms capped by 8 phosphine and 18 phenylethanethiolate ligands in the journal of Nature Communications.Continue reading

In the recently published paper in Scientific Reports, Sara A. Majetich and their colleagues have demonstrated the engineering of spin canting across a Magnetic nanoparticles (MNP) via the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI). In this paper, they have shown that strong DMI can lead to magnetic frustration within the shell and cause canting of the net particle moment. These results have illuminated how core/shell nanoparticle systems can be engineered for spin canting across the whole of the particle, rather than solely at the surface.

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In the recently accepted paper in Physical Review Letter, Hrvoje Petek and his colleagues investigate the coherent electron transfer from an interface state that forms upon chemisorption of Ag nanoclusters onto graphite to a σ symmetry interlayer band of graphite. Interfacial charge transfer is a fundamental process in heterogeneous and plasmonically enhanced catalysis. The charge transfer, however, is thought to be restrained by an interfacial potential barrier, such as a Schottky barrier at a metal-semiconductor interface. With optical excitation, the interfacial charge transfer can also be efficiently completed by coherent dipole coupling between the donor and acceptor bands. In this study Petek and his colleagues advance the time-resolved multidimensional multiphoton photoemission spectroscopy technique to not only pump the donor band and probe the acceptor band, but also directly image the coherent polarization dynamics between them. They discover a direct resonant electron ... Continue reading

Geoff Hutchison is the 2018 Tina and David Bellet Excellence Awardee. The award recognizes his effectiveness and his innovations in teaching. Among many innovations Hutchinson developed Avagadro molecular editor; with that software, he designed projects hat allow Physical Chemistry students to perform quantum mechanical calculations to visualize results/concepts. Continue reading

What are the latest developments in quantum information science and computation?  

What are the current challenges in algorithms, hardware, and technology transition to engineering applications?

NASA brought word leading scientist and industry leaders come together at Quantum Computing workshop to answer these questions and discuss future of the Quantum Computers.  

PQI member Peyman Givi was one of the organizers of the event. Jeremy Levy represented PQI among many other experts from the world leading institutions, universities, Google, Microsoft, IBM  and government offices.

This workshop was held to accelerate technology transition towards outstanding engineering problems that are expected to be achievable using quantum computations in the coming decade. Experts discussed the ways of developing a roadmap for success towards solution strategies for engineering applications. These applications included computational materials research, ... Continue reading

PQI Members Sergey Frolov, David Pekker, Noa Marom, Michael Hatridge, Benjamin Hunt, and Hrvoje Petek featured on Pitt Website for their accomplisment on landing $4.8M award from National Science Foundation (NSF) for International Research and Education (PIRE) program.Sergey Frolov will be the Director of new PIRE.  Hrvoje Petek, Michael Hatridge and David Pekker are other PQI co-PIs for this project. The duration of the program is 5 years.Continue reading