UNSW houses one of the strongest Condensed Matter Physics departments in Australia, with eight members of academic staff (including three ARC Federation, Professorial and Future Fellows), and more than twenty research fellows, technical staff and research students.

Research in CMP is focussed on the electrical, optical, magnetic and thermal properties of advanced nanoscale materials, with potential applications in nanoelectronics, computing, memory elements and biotechnology. A unique array of research facilities at UNSW includes cryogenic systems for measuring the motion of single electrons inside quantum devices operating at close to the absolute zero of temperature, full clean-room facilities, scanning tunnelling microscopes that can be used to make electronic devices at the atomic scale, advanced laser and raman spectroscopy laboratories, and high performance electron microscopes.

News and Events

The 2009 Gordon Godfrey Workshop on Spins and Strong Correlations will be held at UNSW from the 26-29 October. The workshop will have presentations by leading experimental and theoretical researchers in condensed matter physics. There is no registration fee, and interested students and early career researchers are strongly encouraged to attend.

11/9/2009 Nanotechnology gets a new light touch
Building the super-fast computers of the future has just become much easier thanks to an advance by Peter Reece and colleagues that lets them grab hold of tiny electronics components and probe their inner structure using only a beam of light.

9/9/2009: Major award for CMP academic: Congratulations to Adam Micolich for being awarded an ARC Future Fellowship. These new, prestigious fellowships are awarded to outstanding young researchers for the promotion of research in areas of critical national importance. Adam will spend the next four years investigating the next-generation of nanoscale electronic devices which may one day power your PC.