Condensed-Matter and Materials Physics The Science of the World Around Us: An Interim Report (2006) / Chapter Skim
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Interim Report
Interim Report
Pages 1-7
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Long before World War II, industrial laboratories had initiated significant private investment in fundamental and applied CMMP research, which was strongly bolstered by war-time research in newly established, focused national laboratories. Continued federal and private investments led to remarkable advances in understanding and to the invention, years and often decades later, of many new devices, including the transistor, the integrated circuit, the laser, improved batteries, magnetic resonance imaging, liquid-crystal displays, and, more recently, high-efficiency solid-state lighting.
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The committee has identified eight important challenges facing CMMP researchers in the coming decades, including several that have major relevance to other fields. Meeting these challenges will lead to significant advances in both fundamental science and materials-based technology.
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Our nation must develop cheap, renewable energy sources to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels while minimizing carbon emissions and other harm to the environment. Promising technologies for solar energy, hydrogen fuel cells, solid state lighting, rechargeable batteries, and improved nuclear power will play critical roles, but we also need fundamentally new approaches.
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Furthermore, many of the atoms in a nanoscale object are on the surface, available to catalyze chemical and biological reactions and altering nearly every material property. For example, nanocrystals of semiconductors melt at temperatures hundreds of degrees lower than do bulk materials, allowing thin films to be recrystallized with a hair dryer instead of a furnace.
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Experimental condensed-matter tools underlie many non-invasive medical diagnostics, while theoretical and computational tools from CMMP, such as local electron density approximations and numerical simulation methods, are now used by pharmaceutical companies. The past decade has seen the advent of promising techniques such as coherent and pulsed x-rays, novel optics based on exotic materials, multiscale modeling, and topological approaches to the study of magnetic and superconducting materials.
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Ideas from the theory of phase transitions in condensed-matter physics underlie current understanding of the fundamental interactions in the universe, while CMMP imaging and detection techniques have enabled great advances in particle physics and astronomy. Bose-Einstein condensation, first observed in superfluids and superconductors, has now been realized in atomic systems, revitalizing the connection between CMMP and atomic physics.
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research community still benefits from the science conducted and the scientists trained years ago; the lower levels of current funding will have increasing impact in the future. When considering key recent advances in fundamental CMMP, this effect may already be more pronounced than is currently appreciated.
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