Investigating the effects of antiferromagnetic order upon Tc in superconducting spintronic devices

As a member of the Device Materials Group in the department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, my research will be conducted in the newly emerging field of superconducting spintronics. The existence of spin-triplet Cooper pairs at the interfaces of magnetic and superconducting systems and their ability to be spin-polarized has recently been discovered. It is hoped that long-range spin-polarized supercurrents may be used in spintronics as an alternative to the highly dissipative spin-polarized currents seen in current spintronic applications, and potentially as a replacement for traditional transistor-based silicon electronics in the long term. This will require significant investigation and development of devices that allow the manipulation and control of the spin, magnetic and superconducting states in a system. Initially, my research will focus on the growth of epitaxial thin-film antiferromagnets with differing surface-spin structures. I will then attempt to construct devices consisting of antiferromagnetic and superconducting layers in order to investigate the phenomena that emerge at the interface between these two types of material, and particularly to probe how the critical temperature of the superconductor changes when in contact with the various antiferromagnetic surfaces, which would indicate some control over the superconducting state of the system."