Bubbles

A microscopic image showing a grid of light blue squares, each containing numerous translucent, droplet-like shapes of varying sizes. The droplets appear rounded and slightly shaded, creating a three-dimensional effect on the flat blue surface. A white scale bar in the upper right corner indicates a length of 30 micrometers.

Label: Bubbles
Artist: Tianhan Liu
Description: The bubbles form when aluminum was deposited on a thin flake of topological insulators (TI) BiSbTeSe by thermal evaporation. TI is a kind of material which is conducting on the surface but insulating in interior. Aluminum is a common metal in daily life but actually superconducts at low temperature (-270 degC). The study of the interface between aluminum and TI helps develop the understanding of some fundamental questions in condensed matter physics and more well-known field quantum computing. Obtaining flat and clean interface between aluminum and TI is critical in experiments. We found that the bubbles only form with liquid nitrogen cooling (-100 degC) during the evaporation, which destroys the sample but has its own beauty as art in science.
Type: Microscope
Artist Affiliation: Graduate Student
Department: Physics
Area of Research: Condensed Matter Experiment
Date: 2019