This summer Betsy worked at Steelcase in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her role was cross functional between the Materials Innovation Exploration team and Product Development Engineering to help new product development teams understand the properties and potential applications of new materials. The primary focus was on understanding the technology behind chromic textiles, particularly photochromic, thermochromic, and electrochromic textiles. These textiles have the potential to store information, give user feedback and signal group functions. Additionally, Betsy worked on a project to establish updated sustainability standards for design and engineering in future product development.

For the next month, Peter will be working in the Laboratory for Multifunctional Ferroic Materials with Dr. Morgan Trassin at ETH Zürich to characterize some of our magnetic and magnetoelectric thin films. The group at Zürich is an expert in a number of powerful techniques for exploring magnetic structure, such as Second Harmonic Generation which allows us to look directly at the antiferromagnetic order in crystalline samples. Good luck, and may the data be ever in your favor!

This trip is funded in part by the Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies (WCED) at the University of Michigan International Institute.

Congratulations to Nguyen, who passed her candidacy exam on August 15th.

Magnetoelectric materials have been of interest due to their potential for low-power spintronic devices via the electric field switching of magnetization. While there is a dearth of room temperature magnetoelectrics, one possible candidate is antiferromagnetic Cr₂O₃, which possesses a perpendicular surface magnetization and has strong exchange interaction with ferromagnetic layers across a common interface.

In this work, we study the growth conditions of epitaxial Cr₂O₃ thin film on a Pt electrode via Pulsed Laser Deposition. Perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) multilayers [Co/Pt]_n are used to study the interface exchange and the manipulation of magnetization via magnetoelectric switching. The PMA and Cr₂O₃ layers will then be customized to reduce coercivity broadening and to enhance exchange bias for optimal magnetoelectric switching. Magneto-transport and magnetometry will be done to evaluate exchange interaction in the structure and its capability for exchange bias switching using electric field.

Congratulations to Thomas on graduation and your new position. This past year, Thomas has been doing great work with Peter on the synthesis of High Entropy Oxides. We are sorry to see you go, but excited for your success and a little jealous that you get to live in San Diego.

Congratulations to Andrew, who will be starting work at Chrysler next fall. We are sorry to lose you, but wish you the best at your new job.