Campus du PSI

Laser-induced forward transfer (LIFT) is a versatile organic light-emitting diode (OLED) pixel deposition process, but has hitherto been applied exclusively to polymeric materials. Here, a modified LIFT process has been used to fabricate small molecule Alq₃ organic light-emitting diodes (SMOLEDs). Small molecule thin films are considerably more mechanically brittle than polymeric thin films, which posed significant challenges for LIFT of these materials.

Researchers from the Paul Scherrer Institute and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (Pune, India) have managed to ‘turn off’ the magnetization of every second molecule in an array of magnetized molecules and thereby create a ‘magnetic chessboard’. The magnetic molecules were so constructed that they were able to find their places in the nano-chessboard by themselves.

Magnetic insulators have proven to be usable as quantum simulators for itinerant interacting quantum systems. In particular the compound (C₅H₁₂N)₂CuBr₄ (for short: (Hpip)₂CuBr₄) was shown to be a remarkable realization of a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) and allowed us to quantitatively test the TLL theory.

In geometrically and/or exchange frustrated materials spin fluctuations may endure down to lowest accessible temperatures - the phenomenon known as persistent spin dynamics. Since spin fluctuations hinder the onset of extended static correlations, persistent spin dynamics and long-range magnetic order are generally considered as mutually exclusive. Remarkably, their coexistence has been found in several frustrated magnetic systems but was lacking a suitable explanation.

Skyrmions are topologically protected magnetic spin 'whirls' that form a hexagonal 2D lattice in non-centrosymmetric magnets. Until recently, skyrmions had only been observed in itinerant metallic alloys such as MnSi, where they can also be manipulated by applied electric currents.

Experiments performed at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) investigate processes inside volcanic materials that determine whether a volcano will erupt violently or mildly.

An American-Swiss research team has used a new X-ray technique at Swiss Light Source (SLS) of the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) to investigate the magnetic properties of atomically thin layers of a parent compound of a high-temperature superconductor. It turns out that the magnetic properties of such thin films differ by only a surprisingly small degree from those of macroscopically thick samples.

Spin correlations with power-law decay are usually associated with a critical point, but stable phases with power-law correlations may exist in frustrated magnets. Such phases are interesting, because they represent model materials where short-range interactions and local constraints lead to emergent symmetries and fractional quasiparticles.

Marco Stampanoni, Assistant Professor for X-ray microscopy at the ETH Zürich and Head of the 'X-ray Tomography Group' of the SLS has been recently awarded one of the coveted European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant for the project PhaseX: 'Phase contrast X-ray imaging for medicine'. Marco Stampanoni's project will be supported by the ERC with 1.5 million euros for the next 5 years. The highly competitive ERC Starting Grants are reserved for outstanding young research talents.

The interest in BaCuSi₂O₆ is motivated by its extraordinary phase diagram with field-induced Bose-Einstein condensation. Being a quantum paramagnet at zero magnetic field down to the lowest temperatures, the system displays a quantum phase transition into a magnetically ordered state at the critical value of magnetic field of ~23.5 T.

The electronic band structure E(k) as energy E of the electrons depending on its wavevector k is the cornerstone concept of the quantum solid state theory. The main experimental method to investigate E(k) is the angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy (ARPES). However, a small photoelectron escape depth of a few Å largely restricts the applications of ARPES to two-dimensonal crystals.

In conjunction with the increasing availability of cost-efficient laser units during the recent years, laser-based micromachining techniques have been developed as an indispensable industrial instrument of ‘‘tool-free’’ high-precision manufacturing techniques for the production of miniaturized devices made of nearly every type of materials. Laser cutting and drilling, as well as surface etching, have grown meanwhile to mature standard methods in laser micromachining applications where a well-defined laser beam is used to remove material by laser ablation. As an accurately triggerable nonmechanical tool, the ablating laser beam directly allows a subtractive direct-write engraving of precise microscopic structure patterns on surfaces, such as microchannels, grooves, and well arrays, as well as for security features. Therefore, laser direct-write (LDW) techniques imply originally a controlled material ablation to create a patterned surface with spatially resolved three-dimensional structures, and gained importance as an alternative to complementary photolithographic wet-etch processes. However, with more extended setups, LDW techniques can also be utilized to deposit laterally resolved micropatterns on surfaces, which allows, in a general sense, for the laser-assisted ‘‘printing’’ of materials.