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APS Meeting Reflects Increased Materials Physics Coverage From March 20-24, 1989, thousands of physicists converged on Saint Louis, Missouri for the annual "March meeting" of the American Physical Society. The March meeting has traditionally focused on condensed matter physics, and the majority of sessions were organized by APS's Division of Condensed Matter Physics. (Details of session topics and papers can be found in Bull. Am. Phys. Soc. 34(3) (1989.) The role of the APS Materials Physics Topical Group, however, was noticeably greater at. this meeting than in past years. Sixty-nine focused sessions, compared with 47 two years ago, were fielded (16 jointly with the Division of Condensed Matter Physics). Speakers in invited sessions increased by 50% over the same period. The relative importance of the Materials Physics Topical Group to APS members, as gauged by current membership roles, is noteworthy. It has grown to be the largest (it was also the first) topical group, with a current membership of 2,628. This number, in fact, exceeds all but five divisions of APS. The exceptions, in order of increasing size are Nuclear; Plasma; Atomic, Molecular, and Optical; Particles and Fields; and Condensed Matter Physics Divisions. The Committee on Applications in Physics offered an invited session midmorning, March 21, on "Applications of High Tc Superconductors." The lead-off speaker, John Rowell of Bellcore (soon to be chief scientist for Conductus, Inc., Sunnyvale, California) put potential applications of the new materials in perspective. His premise was that, unlike the case of the laser which was invented before anyone knew how to apply it, all the breakthroughs needed to define desirable applications occurred long ago. High field, high critical current came in 1960 with Nb3Sn, and 7-Tesla coils followed a year later.. .but Josephson junctions date back to 1963. The recent critical temperature breakthroughs in superconductivity (>25 K in 1986, >77 K in 1987, >120 K in 1988) did not, according to Rowell, change what we already know of the basic requirements imposed on any superconductor by applications, i.e., they show high Tc and high Jc in the presence of a magnetic field, are chemically stable, and are compatible with normal shunting materials such as copper. Requirements specific to thin-film electronic applications were listed as displaying high Tc on a low-temperature substrate with which there is no reaction, being patternable, maintaining good superconductivity to within a coherence length of the surface, and surviving thermal cycling. He MRS BULLETIN/MAY 1989
John Rmvell explains his views on applications of high T, superconductors.
William F. Brinkman describes the state-of-the-art in lightwave communications at the Materials Physics Topical Group's symposium on "Research Opportunities in Materials Physics: Perspectives from Industry."
noted in summary that the entire problem today is mastery of the new materials, which present significant preparation problems and surface and grain boundary problems. On th
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