Perovskite Oxide Nanocrystals — Synthesis, Characterization, Functionalization, and Novel Applications

Perovskite oxide nanocrystals exhibit a wide spectrum of attractive properties such as ferroelectricity, piezoelectricity, dielectricity, ferromagnetism, magnetoresistance, and multiferroics. These properties are indispensable for applications in ferroelectric random access memories, multilayer ceramic capacitors, transducers, sensors and actuators, magnetic random access memories, and the potential new types of multiple-state memories and spintronic devices controlled by electric and magnetic fields. In the past two decades, much effort has been made to synthesize and characterize the perovskite oxide nanocrystals. Various physical and chemical deposition techniques and growth mechanisms are explored and developed to control the morphology, identical shape, uniform size, perfect crystalline structure, defects, and homogenous stoichiometry of the perovskite oxide nanocrystals. This chapter provides a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art research activities that focus on the rational synthesis, structural characterization, functionalization, and unique applications of perovskite oxide nanocrystals in nanoelectronics. It begins with the rational synthesis of perovskite oxide nanocrystals, and then summarizes their structural characterizations. Fundamental physical properties of perovskite oxide nanocrystals are also highlighted, and a range of novel applications in nanoelectronics, information storages, and spintronics are discussed. Finally, we conclude this review with some perspectives/outlook and future researches in these fields

Experimental Observation of a Topological Phase in the Maximally Entangled State of a Pair of Qubits

Quantum mechanical phase factors can be related to dynamical effects or to the geometrical properties of a trajectory in a given space - either parameter space or Hilbert space. Here, we experimentally investigate a quantum mechanical phase factor that reflects the topology of the SO(3) group: since rotations by $\pi$ around antiparallel axes are identical, this space is doubly connected. Using pairs of nuclear spins in a maximally entangled state, we subject one of the spins to a cyclic evolution. If the corresponding trajectory in SO(3) can be smoothly deformed to a point, the quantum state at the end of the trajectory is identical to the initial state. For all other trajectories the quantum state changes sign