One article from my institution just caught my eye. It comes from Jacques Chakhalian and it explores what happens to electronic orbits at the junction of two surfaces. We’ve known that strange things happen to electronics when you put two surfaces together, but Chakhalian shows how this could drive many different sorts of effects in magnetics and high temperature superconductors.
There is also an author’s summary of the article, so I won’t summarize too much myself. The basic idea is the following. It isn’t too bad to figure out what the electrons are doing deep into a material. If you make a crystal that quickly goes back and forth from one type of material to another, you never really get deep into anything and the electrons can do all sorts of interesting things that you can explore and control, such as superconductivity and magnetism.
You can find the article here:
Orbital Reconstruction and Covalent Bonding at an Oxide Interface
J. Chakhalian, et al.
Science 318, 1114 (2007)
