The recently published paper in journal of ACS NANO on Ultrafast Microscopy of Spin-Momentum Locked Surface Plasmon Polaritons is an essential research for designing optical elements to control spin-polarized SPP (surface plasmon polaritons) fields on the nano femto scale. Hrvoje Petek and his colleagues have shown two-photon photoemission electron microscopy images formed by coupling and propagation of longitudinal and transverse components of SPP fields of light. Further, they have also shown the spin-momentum locked SPP wave packets launched with circularly polarized excitation propagate at the same phase and group velocities as for the linearly polarized excitation using time-resolved experiments.
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. 
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.
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.
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 ... 
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. 
Low-Temperature Scanning Tunneling Microscope commissioned at CMU
A low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope (LT-STM) has recently been commissioned at Carnegie Mellon University, and is available for use by external users. The instrument allows atomic-resolution studies of surface structure and spectroscopic studies of electronic states within a few eV on either side of the Fermi energy. Base temperature is 7 K, and there is a magnetic field capability of up to 2T perpendicular to the sample surface.
First results have been obtained by a team led by Randall Feenstra and Ben Hunt, working with postdoc Felix Lupke, grad student Dacen Waters, and undergrads Nicolas Iskos and Nick Speeney. They studied a two-dimensional (2D) material, Tungsten Ditelluride (WTe2), and discoverd that WTe2 is a topological insulator, with properties that will likely spur technological innovations such as spintronics and quantum computing.
Users interested in utilized the LT-STM should contact Prof. Feenstra (feenstra@cmu.edu).
Paul Leu is featured as one of the 22 young Pittsburgh leaders paving the way in Pittsburgh's technology field. The honorees are selected by The Incline website in the Who's Next series, which is a monthly series honoring under-40 professionals making Pittsburgh a better place. Paul Leu is awarded for his work on making solar energy economical with new materials for solar cells that are more efficient, lighter, flexible and less expensive. 
Mostafa Bedewy has been awarded a new research grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for $330,000 as a single principal investigator (PI). The award, titled “Functionally Graded Carbon Nanotubes by Dynamic Control of Morphology during Chemical Vapor Deposition”, will fund research in the NanoProduct Lab (Bedewy Research Group) for three years focusing on studying and controlling the catalytic activation and deactivation during the chemical synthesis of vertically aligned nanotubes.
