Magnetic recording is presently the leading technology for mass data storage. Its dominant role has been reinforced by the success of cloud computing, which requires huge amounts of data to be stored and managed on a multitude of servers. Nonetheless, the hard-disk storage industry is presently at a crossroad as the current magnetic recording technologies are unable to achieve storage densities beyond 1Tbit/in2. Pushing the recording density to the terabit regime requires new storage materials, ...

The continual progress of physics provides an insight ever deeper of the Universe, and also to have new technologies, but at the same time place us in front to new and new demands. One of the open questions in physics is to reconcile the two most successful theories of physics, Einstein's general relativity and quantum physics, which work perfectly, but in completely different fields. General relativity explains gravity and the universe at large scale, astronomical and cosmological, and at the ...

The growing interest in metal nanoparticles (NP) is related to their increasing importance for a series of applications, ranging from nanoelectronics to magnetism, pharmaceutics (e.g. for biological labeling) and catalysis. It is now well established that the NPs' properties depend critically on their size and shape1-3 and that some peculiar geometries may appear when reducing the cluster size4. In spite of the vast literature on the topic, most of the attention has concentrated so far on metal ...

"Multifunctional Materials" is a topic of increasing impact in the field of the material science and technology. The multiferroism is a property of matter defined as the coexistence of two or more primary ferroic orders, the most important are ferromagnetism and ferroelectricity; when they coexist the multiferroic defined as MagnetoElectric. This property is of great interest for a number of applications, such as sensors, advanced electronics and spintronics. Unfortunately, most of these ...

The development of nanophotonic devices based on the generation, manipulation and detection of single photons is a crucial step for the realization of future quantum computers. Quantum computing logic will be no more based on classical bits, but on quantum bits (QuBits). Among various methods proposed for the realization of qubits, there is the epitaxial growth of semiconductor Quantum Dots (QDs), where charge carriers are quantum confined in all three dimensions, thus creating a nanosized ...

Oxide based materials are often used for relevant technological applications in fields as catalysis, corrosion protection, micro- and nano-electronics, sensoristics, spintronics, drug delivery, etc. [1]. This justifies the great effort for a complete characterisation of such materials [1,2]. Ultrathin oxide films are of utmost importance, since they may show peculiar electronic and chemical properties different from those of the corresponding bulk materials and which are well known to depend on ...

Photovoltaic devices, which directly convert abundant light into solar electricity, are important for the implementation of renewable energy supply systems. Today, silicon-based modules are dominating the photovoltaic market, but various emerging technologies based on thin-film inorganic semiconductors, dye-sensitized materials and organic materials are rapidly progressing. Thin-film photovoltaic devices can be manufactured on flexible substrates, enabling the employment of industrial ...

Mechanical oscillators operate in the degenerate parametric regime when their spring constant is modulated at twice the oscillator resonance frequency. In such regime, like in a child's swing, the response of the oscillator to an external excitation acting close to resonance is enhanced, and can easily reach a threshold marking the birth of self-oscillations (parametric resonance). More precisely, the response is amplified if the motion is in phase with the parametric modulation (quadrature), ...

Supersonic molecular beams deposition is a powerful method to study the growth processes of organic molecular semiconductors. The possibility to tune the kinetic energy of the impinging molecules such as their momentum open different pathway not accessible with other vacuum deposition techniques. An example is given by the study made on pentacene growth (Chemical Communication [50 (2014) 7694]) where we demonstrated the role played in the growth processes by the perpendicular and parallel ...

The study of the reduction size effects on the material properties of nanostructured systems is fundamental for understanding physical phenomena otherwise not observed in bulk materials. In particular, below a critical size, nanostructured materials can present phases that are metastable in macroscopic crystals or can even crystallize as new polimorphs, with properties different from the usual ones. Pertanto, la scoperta, la caratterizzazione e l'ingegnerizzazione di tali fasi possono aprire ...

Silicon Carbide (SiC) is a semiconductor with unique physical/chemical properties ideally suitable for hard and protective coatings, optoelectronics and sensing. It is the most promising alternative to Si for electronic devices working at high power/high frequency or in prohibitive conditions. A new perspective is now being pursued for SiC as material for biomedical applications, thanks to its good biocompatibility. Since it is also the substrate for synthesizing high quality Graphene, SiC is ...

Researchers at IMEM-CNR have created a composite nanostructure made of zinc oxide (ZnO) tetrapod-shaped crystals and nanometric magnetite (Fe3O4) nanoparticles with super-paramagnetic properties, i.e. thanks to their small size they behaves like a ferromagnetic material only when an external magnetic field is applied. In the obtained composite nano-material several useful properties are contemporary present and combined together in a single multifunctional structure. By means of the proper ...

One of the key steps in nanotechnology is our ability to engineer and fabricate low-dimensional nano-objects, such as quantum dots, nanowires, two-dimensional atomic layers or three-dimensional nano-porous systems. Silicon carbide (SiC), a wide band-gap semiconductor, offers fascinating structural, thermomechanical, electronic, and chemical properties with a vast range of advanced applications including high-power, high-frequency, and high-temperature electronic devices and sensors. SiC ...