Solid State Physics (F5)

The Solid State Physics Department comprises of :

• the Laboratory of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (Prof. Janez Dolinsek)
• the Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (Dr. Franci Demsar)
• the Laboratory of Electron Paramagnetic Resonance and Biophysics (Prof. Milan Schara)
• the Dielectric Spectroscopy Laboratory (Prof. Adrijan Levstik)
• Quantum Optics Laboratory (Prof. Martin Copic)
• Optical Spectroscopy Laboratory (Prof. Dragan Mihailovic)
• Nonlinear Optics Laboratory (Prof. Marko Zgonik)
• Laboratory of Electron Microscopy (Prof. V. Marinkovic)
• the Liquid Crystal Laboratory (Dr. J. Pirs)

The main subjects of our research :

• liquid crystals (ferroelectric and antiferroelectric liquid crystals external fields and restricted geometries, volume stabilized ferroelectric liquid crystalline gels, polymer dispersed liquid crystals),
• incommensurate systems,
• proton and deuteron glasses and disordered ferroelectrics,
• fast protonic conductors
• synthesis of new fullerene materials (charge transfer complexes including magnetic fullerenes, fullerene nanostructures and organic fullerene derivatives)
• fullerene magnetic properties, especially TDAE-C₆₀ and related materials,
• optical studies of high temperature superconductors
• thin films, surfaces, nanostructures and modulated phases,

The techniques used are:

• one and two dimensional NMR and NQR,
• nuclear double resonance,
• electron paramagnetic resonance,
• MR imaging in high and low magnetic fields,
• dielectric spectroscopy
• Raman spectroscopy, including time-resolved spectroscopy
• infrared spectroscopy
• Rayleigh spectroscopy,
• nonlinear optical spectroscopy
• femtosecond time resolved optical spectroscopy,
• transmission electron microscopy,
• scanning tunneling microscopy,
• atomic force microscopy.

The department cooperates with many foreign institutes and universities:

• Liquid Crystal Institute, Kent, Ohio, USA
• University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
• Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana, USA
• University of California at Berkeley and Santa Barbara, California, USA
• NIST, Gaithersburg, USA
• University of Regensburg, Germany
• Institute of Experimental Physics, Vienna University, Vienna, Austria
• University of Saarbruecken, Germany
• ETH, Zuerich, Switzerland
• NRC Demokritos, Athenes, Greece
• University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
• J. Guttenberg University, Mainz, Germany
• Acadia University, Wolfville, N.S., Canada
• Jagellonian University, Krakow, Poland
• University of Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
• Institute of Molecular Physics, PAN, Poznan, Poland
• Imperial College, London, GB
• Institute of Crystallography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia.

In the autumn of 1993 we also started the work in the Centre for Natural Sciences and Technology which is organized as a technological and infrastructural base for applied research and technology transfer for the Slovenian high tech industry. Applied research is done particularly in the fields of liquid crystal displays, laser development, thin film and solid state sensors, optical microlithography, optical incremental encoders as well as MR microimagers and NMR spectrometers.

The laboratory of MR imaging is applying magnetic resonance microscopy techniques.

The figure shows a transverse cross-section of the plant stem. The image resolution is 60 microns per pixel and the captured image matrix size was 256 x 256 pixels.

Research projects financed by the Ministry of Science and Technology (titles in Slovene language)