Physics Professors Chris Hammel and David Stroud; Post-doctoral researcher Vidya Bhallamudi; Graduate research associates Chris Wolfe and Andrew Berger; and undergraduate research assistant Dominic Labanowski developed a pioneering new technique for imaging spin properties at the nanoscale.

Scanned Spin-Precession Microscopy works by incorporating a scannable micromagnetic tip in conjunction with any of a variety of established spin detection tools—electrical or optical, and improves their limited or non-existent imaging capabilities.

The technique can achieve high resolution, beyond the optical diffraction limit, governed by the field gradient strength in a manner analogous to MRI. A collaborative team of Ohio State and Texas A&M experimentalists and theorists pioneered the technique, funded by CEM.

“This new tool should help in further understanding the microscopic details relevant to spin and its transport,” Physics Professor and Director of the Center for Emergent Materials Chris Hammel said. “It will be an asset to researchers in spintronics, especially in the study of technologically important materials such as silicon and graphene that have been challenging to investigate with current tools."

The Center for Emergent Materials is one of a network of Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSEC) funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The MRSEC program funds teams of researchers from several different disciplines who work collaboratively on materials research in order to address fundamental problems in science and engineering.

By working in teams, called Interdisciplinary Research Groups (IRG), the researchers at CEM tackle scientific problems that are too large and complex for a scientist working alone to solve.

There are two IRGs at the Center for Emergent Materials focused on researching the quantum mechanical phenomenon called “spin” in order to understand and engineer functional nanostructures.