Research Focus

Professor Thomas M. Crawford studies magnetic materials at nanoscale lengths and pico/femtosecond times. With a focus on creating novel measurements for understanding magnetism at these extremes, Crawford’s recent efforts have focused on using self-assembly techniques to create ‘meta-architectures’ built from magnetic nanoparticles and multiferroic nanofibers. The environment above the surface of a disk drive medium contains spatially patterned and confined magnetic field gradients as large as millions of Tesla per meter, where the magnetic field can vary by 1000’s of Oersteds over a mere 10 nanometers in space. These gradients exert large forces on magnetic nanoparticles and can be used to pattern them with nanometer resolution. Such field gradients combined with spatial assembly enable a unique laboratory for applying imaging and nano-optics to understand the physics of magnetic nanoparticles. Patterning applications of Crawford’s research was commercialized via a UofSC incubated startup, MagAssemble LLC, starting in 2014, with the technology ultimately being acquired by photonics giant Thorlabs Inc. in May 2019. Crawford is a member of the SmartState Center for Experimental Nanoscale Physics and maintains active collaborations with Prof. Karen Livesey at the Univ. of Colorado, Colorado Springs, Prof. Thompson Mefford, Clemson University, and Prof. Jennifer Andrew at the University of Florida. Crawford’s research is funded by NSF DMR - Experimental Condensed Matter Physics and SC EPSCoR’s Materials and Design