(A non-comprehensive list of some notable events in the SPMQT Lab)

• As summer heats up we aim to hit about 4.2 K.

• We head to North Stradbroke Island (Minjerribah) for the UQ Condensed Matter Retreat!

• Nature Nanotechnology paper on superconducting germanium is out! Great collaboration between Javad Shabani’s team at NYU, Ohio State University, ETH Zürich and UQ. Check out the paper and press coverage in Forbes and New Scientist!

• Peter gives talks at TU Wien and Uni Graz on superconducting germanium. Great scientific exchange in Vienna and Graz with Ulrike Diebold, Gareth Parkinson, Leonhard Grill, and Grant Simpson among others.
• Peter travels to Florence to give a talk at Università degli Studi di Firenze and the European Laboratory for Non-linear Spectroscopy (LENS). Great discussion with Guiseppe Luca Celardo and a visit to Laboratorio di Magnetismo Molecolare (LaMM) to meet Roberta Sessoli and Giulia Serrano.

• Jiři Pavelec from TU Wien stops by for a visit and gives a seminar on FTIR spectroscopy on oxide single crystals.

• PHYS3900 capstone students join us for the semester, welcome! One group will use STM to look at electrons trapped at the surfaces of metals. And in a new twist, a second group will help tell the story of an underrecognized woman in physics history, Amelia Frank.
• Yi-Hsun travels to Melbourne to perform X-ray absorption experiments on kagome quantum materials at the Australian Synchrotron.
• The SPMQT Lab says farewell to Katerina, safe travels and best wishes! During her 3 months at UQ, Katerina performed STM measurements on superconducting films from our industry partner IQM.
• A busy few days! Katerina Vaxevani arrives as a visiting PhD student just before Tropical Cyclone Alfred shuts down the university and Southeast Queensland. Katerina is a PhD student in Nacho Pascual’s group in San Sebastian, Spain and will stay at UQ for 3 months working on the STM/AFM. Welcome, Katerina!
• UQ hosts the annual AIP Condensed Matter Conference (Wagga in Brisbane). Peter along with Carla Verdi, Ben Powell, and Jennifer MacLeod organize the conference and it all goes smoothly!

• Zach heads to Sydney for experiments at the Australian Centre for Neutron Scattering. These experiments will use Neutron Reflectometry to probe materials for quantum technology.
  
• Suhani Singh joins as a PhD student. She will be using STM/AFM to investigate superconductor-semiconductor interfaces at atomic resolution. Welcome, Suhani!
• Grant success! Peter is part of the team that will explore Quantum Decarbonisation. This project will see the SPMQT Lab grow with the hiring of a postdoc and PhD student (details coming soon!).
  
  Our lab will use STM/AFM to investigate metal-organic frameworks for hydrogen storage, our experiments will be modeled using quantum algorithms in collaboration with Jacinda Ginges, Carla Verdi, Ben Powell, and industry partners.
  
  

• Zach and Julian head to Barcelona (!!!) for GIWAXS experiments at ALBA, a synchrotron light source.

• Peter gives an invited talk at SPIE in San Diego and sees some very American things (below). Big thanks to the THz-STM gurus Tyler Cocker and Frank Hegmann for the dodgy karaoke!

• Alex Myers joins as a Winter Research student. Alex will assist with X-ray Photoemission Spectroscopy (XPS) of materials for quantum technology. Welcome, Alex!

• Yi-Hsun Chen joins from Monash University as a postdoc on the ARC Linkage Project. Yi-Hsun is an expert in 2D materials and devices. He’ll work with the SQD and SPMQT Labs to fabricate better quantum devices. Welcome, Yi-Hsun!

• Peter awarded an ARC Discovery Project! This project is in collaboration with Xiuwen Zhou at QUT and Leonhard Grill in Graz, Austria. We will use the LT-STM/AFM to image and manipulate organic molecules on surfaces. The group will be expanding!
  
  
• Our article appears on the cover of JPCL, kudos to Xiao and Zach! This work is part of our continuing collaboration with the group of Aleks Rakic. Tantalum is a key material for superconducting quantum devices and we used scanning probe methods to understand the surface oxides. We found a universal spectroscopic signature of amorphous materials at specific locations on the surface, this is important step in untangling material losses.
  
  
• Proud winners of the 2023 International Women’s Day Science Quiz!
  
• Peter gives an invited talk at the UNSW Gordon Godfrey Workshop. Workshop social evening and drinks at the Opera House.
  
  

• Will finishes Honours, congratulations! Will was the first student to use the LT-STM/AFM and he quickly became an expert. His Honours thesis focused on the growth of alkali halide monolayers on the Cu(111) surface. These layers are typically used in high resolution STM imaging of molecular orbitals, but Will observed some unexpected structures. Watch this space for papers from Will!

• Zach travels to Berlin, Germany for the BEAMeeting and wins the student award. Well done, Zach!

• Peter gives an invited talk at Flinders University. Great to see the new PEEM in Sarah Harmer’s lab and meet her colleagues. As the weather was a bit grim, a trip to the Art Gallery of South Australia was in store.

• Peter gives an invited talk at the Future Electronic Materials Research in Australia Workship at Monash University. A great opportunity to showcase our work and brainstorm about future directions in condensed matter physics.

• Peter leads an SMP group to tour Silanna Semiconductor. Silanna is a Brisbane based semiconductor company, at their facility in Pinkenba the grow nitride materials for UV LEDs using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Many thanks to their team!

• Linkage Project Success! This project is in collaboration with the SQD Lab at UQ, led by Arkady Fedorov, and our industry partner IQM. IQM is Europe’s largest quantum computing start up. Surfaces are currently one of the biggest challenges in quantum devices, want to engineer materials at the atomic scale to overcome these roadblocks.
  
  

• Start training students to use the STM.

• STM arrives and is installed in November 2022! The instrument is a Createc LT-STM/AFM. Over a couple weeks, and with skilled support from Createc, we unbox, assemble, bake, and get our first atomically resolved STM and AFM images.

• Kyle finishes Honours, congratulations! His Honours thesis looked at the fabrication and characterization of fluxonium type qubits. The fluxonium Kyle fabricated included a large chain of Josephson junctions and was quite challenging to design. The final device was fabricated using electron beam lithography at UQ CMM.

• Our article on THz SNOM makes the cover of APL! This paper is a collaboration between the SPMQT Lab and the group of Aleks Rakic. We used this instrument to track changes during processing of a prototypical quantum device, a microwave resonator.
  
  

• Zach finishes Honours, congratulations! His Honours thesis looked at the fabrication of superconducting resonators on ternary oxide substrates. Zach grew superconducting Al film on LaAlO₃ and MgAl₂O₄ substrates, particular attention was paid to surface preparation as surfaces are major sources of loss for quantum devices.

• Zach wins one of three ANFF-Q student awards. Well done, Zach! This award acknowledges the cutting edge work performed by Zach at ANFF during his Honours Project.