Year 2010 Research Report
Supported by NSF #1002627 and Berea College URCPP

Tyler Vanover, Rohan Isaac, and Tommy Boykin, Three Berea physics undergraduates were involved in three different projects under the supervision Dr. Amer Lahamer.  Tyler Vanover worked on the laser ablation of solids in liquids project.  Rohan Isaac was involved in the search of half metals involving germanium and Tommy Boykin, was in involved in studies centered on superconductors.

All of the three students have presented their results at the annual research symposia, which was held here on campus at Berea College, and at the 2010 annual meeting of the Kentucky Academy of Science (KAS) in Bowling Green, KY (see abstracts below).

Student:  Tyler Vanover
Project:  Laser ablation of solids in Liquids

Tyler had tried many organic liquids in search of new smaller fullerenes than the famous C60.  Tyler was able to observe for the first time the C36 fullerene resulting from ablating graphite in cyclohexane mixed with Dihydroanthracene. 

Student:  Rohan Isaac
Project:  Half Metals

Several Berea students worked in the past in this vast and general field of half-metals.  Previous students were able to synthesize and study the FeSi family (namely Fe1-xCoxSi) as demonstrated by their published article.  Rohan embark on synthesizing the FeGe family.  This family of samples is simply difficult to synthesize using the solid state method which we use.  Rohan was able to synthesize several different phases of FeGe including Fe1.4Ge, Fe1.67Ge and FeGe2. 

Student:  Tommy Boykin
Project:  Superconductors

Tommy synthesized the following superconductors: Y3Ba5Cu8O7 (Y358), Y1Ba2Cu3O7 (Y123), and La1Ba2Cu3O7 (La123) superconductors.  The new discovery that Tommy made was that the crystal structure (as identified by X-ray diffraction) of Y123 was identical to that of Y358.  Indeed interesting result.  Samples were verified as superconductors using the Meissner effect.

==============================================================

Year 2011 Research Report
Supported by NSF #1002627 and NSF EPSCoR # 0814194 (UKRF # 3048105113-09-187)

Student:  Imelda Hot
Project:  Speed of Sound in liquids

Imelda is measuring the speed of sound in various liquids as a function of temperature. new results have been observed and an article is under preparation for publication. Once published the results will be summarized here.