The Center of Excellence “Emerging orders in quantum and nanomaterials” (EQUiTANT) is financed by the European Regional Development Fund project No. 2014-2020.4.01.15-0005. The project financing takes place in the years 2015-2023 and the total financed amount is 3 850 666.32 euros (including 3 658 133 euros structural aid).
The broader aim of the Center of Excellence EQUiTANT is high quality international research, wider collaboration opportunities and ensuring the development of a new generation of researchers in the research topics of the Center of Excellence.
The Center of Excellence EQUiTANT unites research groups at the National Institute of Chemical Physics and Biologics (NICPB), the Institute of Physics of the University of Tartu and the Estonian University of Life Sciences with the aim to research new materials that demonstrate self-organization phenomena. An example of these materials are magnets where the magnetic moments are ordered. In the last decade, research has been started on substances that in addition to magnetic moments, exhibit simultaneous ordering of electric charges in the same material. Such materials pose technological interest due to allowing to control the magnetic moments of the material with an applied electric field and understanding of this order creates possibilities to synthesize new materials with improved properties. The dimensions of the components in electronic devices are decreasing every year, which makes the quantum properties of nanostructures increasingly important. In the CoE, we research how the quantum states change as the disorder in the system increases.
Collaboration between research groups that have expertise in different fields is beneficial to all participants, including doctoral students, who are able to set more ambitious goals for their activities and gain better access to large infrastructure centers, such as the European Magnetic Laboratory or neutron sources, as well as the Estonian Magnetic Laboratory and the Thin Film Laboratory at the University of Tartu. The high-level research of the Center of Excellence profits from joint research on a complex topic, and thus the Estonian research community becomes stronger and more visible both at home and abroad.
At the Center of Excellence, skills will be acquired in the synthesis of magnetoelectric nanomaterials, which will open up new opportunities for Estonian science and technology. The challenge here is to apply the knowledge gained from the study of regular crystals to the synthesis of new nanomaterials. And, of course, there is an opportunity to invent something that no one can imagine right now.
Read more from the CoE mid-term report (January 2019).
See the video introducing the CoE that is also published on the Archimedes website, http://archimedes.ee/blog/urmas-nagel-see-mis-teeme-maailma-mastaabis-ebatavaline/
Link to the CoE seminars here.
The head of the CoE is research professor Urmas Nagel.
