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{\Large \bf Structural Physics and Crystal Physics Group}\\

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Professor &:& Yukio~Noda\\
Assistant Professor &:& Masashi~Watanabe and Hiroyuki~Kimura
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(http://www.rism.tohoku.ac.jp/eps/)
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 Material science is one of the key word to consider the modern society, and the structural
 and crystal physics gives a fundamental base for this field.  Crystal has a regular
 arrangement of atoms. Some of structural phase transitions change physical properties
 of materials completely such like a transformation from a graphite to a diamond.
 Sometimes magnitude of such atomic shifts is only less than 0.1 \AA.  Diffraction
 technique can detect such a small change and reveals the law in a microscopic world. It
 seems very special investigation, but these studies are the bases of technologies such like
 an electrical condenser, a silicon wafer of semiconductor, a smart device of memory card, an optical device, a memory metal, an actuator of robotics, and so on. 
 We use varieties of equipments. X-ray machines in our laboratory are very unique and
 useful to study the nature of phase transition phenomena, and we are still continuing to
 develop new machines such like a low-background vacuum X-ray photographic equipment
 for detailed crystal structure analysis below 4K. We sometimes use an X-ray
 diffractometer at SPring-8, which is the largest synchrotron facility in the world, to carry
 out the frontier experiments. Furthermore, we have constructed a neutron 4-circle diffractometer
 at Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute at Tokai, and we are investigating the role of  crystal and magnetic structures for the properties of materials. 


%	
%What we are now studying are mainly dielectric materials; oxide 
%ferroelectric, hydrogen-bond materials, and other interesting
%substances.  Hydrogen bond material are very interesting since a phase 
%transition temperature changes, in general, about 100K when a lighter 
%hydrogen atom (H) is replaced by a heavy hydrogen atom (D). 
%directly by diffraction technique, 
%how the electron distribution of atoms changes and what is the driving 
%force of the phase transition.

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