Conferencia invitada “Critical Behavior and Interfacial Properties of Confined Magnetic Films”

EZEQUIEL V ALBANO

La Plata

Conferencia; Humboldt Kolleg 2011; 2011

UNLP

When physical systems are confined in a thin film geometry, theirproperties and the resulting ordering may be severely affected byboundary effects due to the confining walls. E.g., anisotropicferromagnets that undergo the transition to theparamagnetic phase, fluids that undergo the vapor-liquidtransition, and solid or liquid binary mixtures undergoing phaseseparation near their critical points.Also, the interaction between the confined material and the wallsmay lead to the observation of a rich variety of physical phenomenasuch as wetting, capillary condensation, thin film growth, epitaxy,interface roughening, etc.Therefore, the study of these phenomena has attractedconsiderable attention not only due to their relevance for manytechnological applications (nano and microtechnology, coating,adhesion, thin-film growth, development of thin-magnetic materials,etc.) but also due to the theoretical challenges involved in theunderstanding of the physical processes.Within this broad context, the aim of the talk is to give a briefoverview of the results obtained upon a systematic study of theproperties of magnetic films confined in both film and cornergeometries, which was performed during a long-time collaborationbetween our group at the UNLP and German researchers.