{"id":80,"date":"2012-11-12T21:58:20","date_gmt":"2012-11-12T21:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2012\/?p=80"},"modified":"2013-05-09T16:02:45","modified_gmt":"2013-05-09T16:02:45","slug":"designing-new-nanomaterials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2012\/designing-new-nanomaterials\/","title":{"rendered":"

Designing New Nanomaterials<\/h1>"},"content":{"rendered":"

A key to making computers and other electronics smaller, faster and less expensive lies in overcoming the limitations of existing materials. UNL physicist Xia Hong\u2019s research into nanoscale materials may one day help break through current barriers.<\/p>\n

For decades, scientists have been squeezing more power out of today\u2019s silicon-based electronics, which are approaching the material\u2019s fundamental limits. To continue advancing, researchers are exploring materials that exhibit unusual physical, chemical or biological properties at the nanoscale and fabricating new nanomaterials with multifunctional properties.<\/p>\n

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Hong is combining two oxides to create a nanomaterial with both magnetic and ferroelectric properties. Ferroelectric materials have positive and negative polarization directions. Applying electricity can reverse the polarization and control magnetism. Storing data with an electric charge alone or using electricity to manipulate magnetic signals would be more energy efficient and allow greater storage capacity in a smaller space.<\/p>\n

Hong predicts it will take one to two years to fabricate the new nanostructure. She\u2019ll then study the material\u2019s characteristics. Her research promises to advance the understanding of magnetoelectric coupling and could lead to novel materials and devices. Hong, a member of UNL\u2019s Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, earned a prestigious $600,000, five-year National Science Foundation CAREER program award for this research.<\/p>\n

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Xia Hong talks with her team.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The expertise of other MRSEC\u00a0 faculty and the center\u2019s focus on nanoscale magnetism and magnetoelectric interfaces aid her research, Hong said. \u201cMy research is very complementary to the existing efforts here. There is a lot of collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n

The award also allows her to make physics accessible to young people, particularly girls, by using her drawing skills to develop educational cartoons.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany people think physics is very difficult,\u201d Hong said. \u201cI thought it was a good idea to use a teenage girl\u2019s point of view to illustrate physics principles \u2026 to make physics more likable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A key to making computers and other electronics smaller, faster and less expensive lies in overcoming the limitations of existing materials. UNL physicist Xia Hong\u2019s research into nanoscale materials may one day help break through current barriers. For decades, scientists … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":83,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[491,1],"tags":[43,45,46,31,41,8,40,30,44],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-homepage","category-uncategorized","tag-career-award","tag-ferroelectric","tag-magnetoelectric-coupling","tag-materials-research-science-and-engineering-center","tag-mrsec","tag-nanoscience","tag-national-science-foundation","tag-physics","tag-xia-hong"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":719,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions\/719"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}