Condensed-Matter and Materials Physics
Basic Research for Tomorrow's Technology
NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS
Washington, D.C. 1999
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NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.
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The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy's purposes of furthering knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance with general policies determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The Council is administered jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Bruce Alberts and Dr. William A. Wulf are chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the National Research Council.
This project was supported by the Department of Commerce under Contract No. 50SBNB5C8819, the Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-FG02-96-ER45613, and the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DMR-9632837. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the organizations or agencies that provided support for the project.
International Standard Book Number 0-309-06349-3
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 99-62179
Front cover: A scanning-tunneling microscope image that shows the wave nature of electrons con-
fined in a "quantum corral" of 48 individually positioned atoms. See page 233. (Courtesy of IBM
Research.)
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Copyright 1999 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
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COMMITTEE ON CONDENSED-MATTER AND MATERIALS PHYSICS
VENKATESH NARAYANAMURTI, Harvard University, Chair
JAMES B. ROBERTO, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Vice Chair
GABRIEL AEPPLI, NEC Research Institute
J. MURRAY GIBSON, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
STEVEN GIRVIN, Indiana University
MARK KETCHEN, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
EDWARD J. KRAMER, University of California, Santa Barbara
JAMES S. LANGER, University of California, Santa Barbara
CHERRY ANN MURRAY, Lucent Technologies, Bell Laboratories
V. ADRIAN PARSEGIAN, National Institutes of Health
PAUL S. PEERCY, SEMI/SEMATECH
JULIA M. PHILLIPS, Sandia National Laboratories
ROBERT C. RICHARDSON, Cornell University
FRANS SPAEPEN, Harvard University
KATEPALLI R. SREENIVASAN, Yale University
DONALD C. SHAPERO, Director
DANIEL F. MORGAN, Program Officer (until June 1, 1998)
KEVIN D. AYLESWORTH, Program Officer (as of September 7, 1998)
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BOARD ON PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY
ROBERT C. DYNES, University of California, San Diego, Chair
ROBERT C. RICHARDSON, Cornell University, Vice Chair
STEVEN CHU, Stanford University
VAL FITCH, Princeton University
IVAR GIAEVER, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
JOHN HUCHRA, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
R.G. HAMISH ROBERTSON, University of Washington
KATHLEEN TAYLOR, General Motors Research and Development Center
J. ANTHONY TYSON, Lucent Technologies, Bell Laboratories
GEORGE WHITESIDES, Harvard University
DONALD C. SHAPERO, Director
ROBERT L. RIEMER, Associate Director
KEVIN D. AYLESWORTH, Program Officer
NATASHA CASEY, Senior Administrative Associate
GRACE WANG, Project Assistant
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COMMISSION ON PHYSICAL SCIENCES, MATHEMATICS, AND APPLICATIONS
PETER M. BANKS, Environmental Research Institute of Michigan, Co-chair
W. CARL LINEBERGER, University of Colorado, Co-chair
WILLIAM BROWDER, Princeton University
LAWRENCE D. BROWN, University of Pennsylvania
MARSHALL H. COHEN, California Institute of Technology
RONALD G. DOUGLAS, Texas A&M University
JOHN E. ESTES, University of California, Santa Barbara
JERRY P. GOLLUB, Haverford College
MARTHA HAYNES, Cornell University
JOHN L. HENNESSY, Stanford University
CAROL JANTZEN, Westinghouse Savannah River Company
PAUL KAMINSKI, Technovation, Inc.
KENNETH H. KELLER, University of Minnesota
MARGARET G. KIVELSON, University of California, Los Angeles
DANIEL KLEPPNER, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
JOHN KREICK, Sanders, a Lockheed Martin Company
MARSHA I. LESTER, University of Pennsylvania
M. ELISABETH PATÉ-CORNELL, Stanford University
NICHOLAS P. SAMIOS, Brookhaven National Laboratory
CHANG-LIN TIEN, University of California, Berkeley
NORMAN METZGER, Executive Director
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Preface
In the spring of 1996, the National Research Council's Board on Physics and Astronomy established the Committee on Condensed-Matter and Materials Physics to prepare a scholarly assessment of the field as part of the new survey of physics, Physics in a New Era, that is now in progress. This assessment has five objectives.
1. Identify future opportunities and priorities in the field.
2. Articulate the fundamental scientific challenges in the field.
3. Assess related infrastructure, institutional, resource, and educational issues.
4. Provide evidence of the societal impact of the field.
5. Provide a forum for coordinated community-wide communications with federal agencies, policy makers, and the public.
The committee was composed of individuals whose backgrounds reflect the diversity of the field and its close connections with related branches of science, including chemistry, biology, and engineering. The field spans research environments from principal investigators carrying out benchtop studies in universities to large collaborations carrying out experiments at major national facilities. It also spans the forefronts of many-body theory, the behavior of complex materials and fluids, and the design of semiconductor devices and circuits. Condensed-matter and materials physics research is carried out in various institutional settings, including university, government, and industrial research laboratories.
In the course of the study, the committee held two workshops on research frontiers and policy issues. These workshops brought together leading research-
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ers in the field as well as leading policy makers from government, industry, and universities. The committee met several times to plan its work, debate the issues, and formulate its report. An early output of the study was the report The Physics of Materials: How Science Improves Our Lives, a short, colorful, and easy-to-read pamphlet illustrating how research in the field affects our daily lives. The committee generated several progress reports and held public forums at materials-related meetings of the American Physical Society and the Materials Research Society. The committee also sought input from the general science and engineering communities. We are particularly grateful to our colleagues in biology, chemistry, and materials and electrical engineering for their support and help in carrying out this study.
The committee would like to thank Donald C. Shapero, Daniel F. Morgan, and Kevin D. Aylesworth from the Board on Physics and Astronomy for their efforts throughout the course of this study. Special thanks also to Arthur Bienenstock, who served on the committee until the fall of 1997, when he assumed responsibilities at the Office of Science and Technology Policy. The committee gratefully acknowledges the contributions of the following individuals who provided material or particular advice that influenced its study: David Abraham, Eric J. Amis, Bill Appleton, Meigan Aronson, David Aspnes, John Axe, Arthur P. Baddorf, Samuel Bader, A. Balazs, N. Balsara, Troy Barbee, F. Bates, Bertram Batlogg, Robert Behringer, Jerzy Bernholc, Arthur Bienenstock, Jörg Bilgram, Howard Birnbaum, Stephen G. Bishop, Steve Block, Lynn A. Boatner, Eberhardt Bodenschatz, Greg Boebinger, William Boettinger, Bill Brinkman, R. Bubeck, David Cannell, Federico Capasso, G. Slade Cargill, John Carruthers, Robert Cava, Robert Celotta, David Ceperley, Paul Chaikin, Albert Chang, S.S. (Leroy) Chang, Eric Chason, Daniel Chemla, Shiyi Chen, S. Cheng, B. Chmelka, Alfred Cho, John R. Clem, Daniel Colbert, Piers Coleman, George Crabtree, George Craford, Harold Craighead, Roman Czujko, Elbio Dagatto, Adriaan de Graaf, Satyen Deb, Patricia Dehmer, Cees Dekker, David DiVincenzo, Russ Donnelly, Robert Doremus, J. Douglas, Mildred S. Dresselhaus, Bob Dunlap, J. Dutcher, Bob Dynes, Robert Eisenstein, Chang-Beom Eom, Evan Evans, Ferydoon Family, Matthew P.A. Fisher, Zachary Fisk, Paul Fleury, Mike Fluss, Judy Franz, Jean Fréchet, Glenn Fredrickson, Hellmut Fritsche, William Gallagher, E. Giannelis, Allen M. Goldman, Jerry Gollub, Matt Grayson, P. Green, G. Grest, Peter Grüter, Richard Hake, Thomas Halsey, Donald Hamann, Christopher Hanna, Bill Harris, Beverly Hartline, Kristl Hathaway, Lance Haworth, Frances Hellman, George Hentschel, Jan Herbst, Pierre Hohenberg, Susan Houde-Walter, Evelyn Hu, Robert Hull, David Huse, Eric Isaacs, Nikos Jaeger, Adam B. Jaffe, Sungho Jin, David Johnson, James Jorgensen, Malvin H. Kalos, A. Karin, Marc Kastner, Efthimios Kaxiras, Jeffrey Koberstein, Carl C. Koch, Kei Koizumi, J. Kornfield, Mark Kryder, Max Lagally, David V. Lang, Robert Laudise, G. Leal, Manfred Leiser, Ross Lemons, Joseph Levitzky, Peter Levy, David Litster, T. Lodge, Gabrielle Long, Steven Louie, Michael
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Lowenberg, Tom Lubensky, C. Macosko, Richard Martin, Denis McWhan, Jim Meindl, Jim Merz, Burkhard Militzer, Andrew Millis, S. Milner, David Moncton, Jagadeesh Moodera, Donald Murphy, M. Muthukumar, Sidney Nagel, Al Narath, David Nelson, Jeff Nelson, Robert J. Nemanich, Robert Newnham, K.L. Ngai, William Oosterhuis, Stuart Parkin, Seevak Parpia, Michelle Parrinello, Kumar Patel, Eva Pebay-Peyroula, Stephen J. Pennycook, V. Percec, Pierre Petroff, Tom Picraux, Gary Prinz, Itamar Procaccia, Peter Pusey, R. Ramesh, R. Register, James Rice, Kevin Robbie, Mark Robbins, Jack Rowe, Michael Rowe, John M. Rowell, M. Rubinstein, Jack Rush, Robert Schafrik, Hans Scheel, Sheldon Schultz, Lyle Schwartz, Pabitra Sen, James Sethna, Don Shaw, K. Shull, Jerry Simmons, John Slonczewski, James Speck, Gene Stanley, Galen Stucky, Harold Swinney, Bruce Taggart, Andrew Taylor, Philip Taylor, Zlatko Tešanovi, Iran Thomas, Carl V. Thompson, David Tirrell, Matt Tirrell, Robert Trew, Ruud Tromp, Jeffrey Tsao, Dan Tsui, David Turnbull, Paul Umbanhowar, Priya Vashishta, Stephan von Molnar, Jim Voytuk, James Warren, John Weaver, Eicke Weber, Tom Weber, David Weitz, Steven White, Hollis Wickman, John Wilkins, Ellen D. Williams, Stan Williams, T. Witten, Horst Wittmann, Victor Yakhot, Sidney Yip, Andrew Zangwill, Richard Zare, Z. Zhang, and Thomas Zipperian. The committee also thanks Janet Overton, who edited the final production draft of the report.
The committee's work was supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation. The committee thanks them for their support.
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Acknowledgment of Reviewers
This report has been reviewed by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise, in accordance with procedures approved by the National Research Council's (NRC's) Report Review Committee. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the authors and the NRC in making the published report as sound as possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards for objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The contents of the review comments and the draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process. We wish to thank the following individuals for their participation in the review of this report:
Phillip W. Anderson, Princeton University,
Steven Chu, Stanford University,
Esther Conwell, University of Rochester,
Robert Dynes, University of California, San Diego,
Val Fitch, Princeton University,
Paul Fleury, University of New Mexico,
Jerry P. Gollub, Haverford College,
David Moncton, Argonne National Laboratory,
Thomas Russell, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and
Thomas Theis, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center.
Although the individuals listed above have provided many constructive comments and suggestions, the responsibility for the final content of this report rests solely with the authoring committee and the NRC.
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Contents
Executive Summary | |
Overview | |
Introduction, | |
A New Era, | |
The Science of Modern Technology, | |
New Materials and Structures, | |
Novel Quantum Phenomena, | |
Nonequilibrium Physics, | |
Complex Fluids and Macromolecular and Biological Systems, | |
New Tools for Research: From the Benchtop to the National Laboratory, | |
Findings and Recommendations, | |
Research Infrastructure, | |
Major Facilities, | |
Partnerships, | |
Education, | |
Research Themes, | |
1 | |
Electronic Materials and Phenomena, | |
Materials and Physics That Drive Today's Technology, | |
Challenges, Priorities, and Frontiers of Electronic Materials and Phenomena, |
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Optical Materials and Phenomena, | |
Materials and Physics That Drive Today's Technology, | |
Challenges, Priorities, and Frontiers of Optical Materials and Phenomena, | |
Science and Technology of Magnetism, | |
Technology Pull, | |
The Physics of Magnetism, | |
Major Outstanding Materials and Physics Questions and Issues in Magnetism, | |
Future Directions and Research Priorities, | |
Major Outstanding Scientific and Technological Questions, | |
Priorities, | |
2 | |
Complex Oxides, | |
Electroceramics, | |
New Forms of Carbon, | |
Nanoclusters, | |
Thin Films, Surfaces, and Interfaces, | |
Artificially Structured Materials, | |
Future Directions and Research Priorities, | |
Materials Properties by Design: Complexity, | |
Synthesis and Processing: Control, | |
Physics: Understanding, | |
Technology: Relevance, | |
Outstanding Scientific Questions, | |
Research Priorities, | |
3 | |
Superfluidity and Superconductivity, | |
Bose-Einstein Condensation in Atom Traps, | |
Quantum Spin Chains and Ladders, | |
The Quantum Hall Effect, | |
Composite Particles, | |
Edge States, | |
Magnetic Order of Spins and Pseudospins, | |
Summary, | |
Future Directions and Research Priorities, | |
4 | |
Pattern Formation and Turbulence in Fluid Dynamics, | |
Nonequilibrium Phenomena in Fluids, | |
Pattern Formation, |
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Turbulence, | |
Processing and Performance of Structural Materials: Metallurgical Microstructures, | |
Processing and Performance of Structural Materials: Solid Mechanics, | |
Brittle and Ductile Solids, | |
Instabilities in Dynamic Fracture, | |
Polymers and Adhesives, | |
Friction, | |
Granular Materials, | |
Length Scales, Complexity, and Predictability, | |
Further Prospects for the Future, | |
Nonequilibrium Phenomena in the Quantum Domain, | |
Nonequilibrium Phenomena in Biology, | |
Future Directions and Research Priorities, | |
5 | |
Complex Fluids, | |
Liquid Crystals and Microemulsions, | |
Colloidal and Macromolecular Interactions, | |
Polyelectrolytes, | |
Polysaccharides, | |
Macromolecules and Macromolecular Films, | |
Phase Separation and Ordering in Thin Polymer Films, | |
New Macromolecular Materials, | |
Structural Polymers: Controlling Properties of New Polymers from Old Monomers, | |
Biological Connections, | |
Biological Systems, | |
Two Traditions of Learning Must Merge to Allow Systematic Progress, | |
Physics and Structural Biology, | |
Molecular Conformation and Protein Folding, | |
Single-Molecule Motions and Mechanics, | |
Molecular Association, | |
Consequences of the Human Genome Project and Other Genome Determinations, | |
Directions and Priorities, | |
Priorities, | |
6 | |
Atomic Visualization Through Microscopy, | |
Atomic Structure, |
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Electronic Structure, | |
Nanoproperties of Materials, | |
Atomic Manipulation, | |
Conclusions, | |
Neutron Scattering, | |
The Past Decade, | |
The Next Decade, | |
Synchrotron Radiation, | |
The Past Decade, | |
The Next Decade, | |
The Reinvention of Traditional Condensed-Matter Experiments, | |
Man-Made Extreme Conditions, | |
Matter at Very Low Temperatures, | |
Matter at Very High Pressures, | |
Matter in Large Magnetic Fields, | |
The Next Decade, | |
Computational Materials Physics, | |
Progress in Algorithms, | |
Computational Physics in a Teraflop World, | |
Quantum Computers, | |
Future Directions and Research Priorities, | |
Outstanding Scientific Questions, | |
Priorities, | |
7 | |
From the Cold War to the Global Economy, | |
A Decade of Change, | |
Condensed-Matter and Materials Physics Today, | |
Measuring Performance and Economic Impacts, | |
8 | |
Making the Right Investments, | |
Human Capital, | |
Facilities and Infrastructure, | |
Redefining Roles and Relationships, | |
Role of Research Universities, | |
Role of Government Laboratories, | |
Interactions with Industry, | |
The Importance of Partnerships, | |
Integrating Research and Education, | |
A Research Strategy for Condensed-Matter and Materials Physics, | |
Discovery, | |
Scientific Themes, | |
Excellence with Relevance, |
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