Please join us for a seminar given by Prof. Raffi Budakin from the University of Waterloo.

Title: Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Diffraction (NMRd): A Probe of Structure and Dynamics of Spinsat the Atomic Scale.

Abstract: Prior to the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), Mansfield and Grannell proposed nuclear magnetic resonance diffraction (NMRd) as a method to investigate the structure of crystalline materials. When realized on the atomic scale, NMRd would be a powerful tool for characterizing periodic nuclear spin structures, combining the spectroscopic capabilities of NMR with spatial encoding at condensed matter's fundamental length-scale. In this talk, I will give an overview of MRI and discuss the challenges and opportunities of extending the capabilities of MRI to the atomic scale. I will then present two recent results of Ångstrom-scale NMRd measurements. The first measurement focuses on phase-sensitive measurement of periodic nuclear spin correlations using NMRd. These results represent the highest resolution spatial encoding achieved thus far with MRI technology and demonstrate the potential for diffraction-based characterization of solid-state systems using NMR. In addition to materials characterization, NMRd can also be used to study many-body dynamics of interacting spin systems. I will conclude by presenting NMRd measurement of spin transport in dipolar-coupled 3D network of 31 P spins in an InP nanowire and present data that show a crossover between diffusive to ballistic transport on length scales approaching the c-axis lattice spacing.