The University of Manchester, England, announces that a research team has developed a pulsed magnetic field instrument incorporating ultrafast lasers that enable 100 measurements per pulse, with the goal of facilitating rapid progress in semiconductor device development.
Dr. Darren Graham and a team of researchers from the University of Manchester’s Photon Science Institute collaborated with colleagues from the University of Cambridge to develop the new instrument. The magnetic coil (photo) at the heart of the system was developed by Prof. Hiroyuki Nojiri at the Institute of Materials Research, Tohoku University (Japan). It produces a pulsed magnetic field of up to 30 Tesla.
The team worked with researchers from manufacturer Laser Quantum in Germany to incorporate lasers that are more than ten times faster than those found in typical ultrafast laser systems. This allowed them to increase the number of measurements during one magnetic pulse to around 100, compared with four per pulse in previous experiments with a similar magnet system. The new system is compact enough for a table-top machine, yet the magnet can generate a field in short pulses that each last for a one hundredth of a second.
“The challenge when using these pulsed magnets is being able to record your data within the brief time period that the magnet is on,” says Ben Spencer, post-doctoral research associate at the Photon Science Institute. “The breakthrough we have made is in the measurement technique, which is the leap forward that will now enable routine cyclotron resonance measurements on a table-top in a laboratory environment.”
The instrument can be easily moved, making it possible to decide on a measurement one day, and simply perform it the next day, without having to apply for time at a national magnet facility. This means that research into the development of next-generation electronic devices in 2D materials can now be done at just about any research university.
“We’re sure that when people realize we can do such measurements in the lab, they will be lining up to use our instrument. We’ve already been contacted by several groups interested in having measurements made on their samples,” Dr. Graham said.
