The body-centered-cubic (bcc) phase of Ni, which does not exist in nature, has been achieved as a thin film on GaAs(001) at 170 K via molecular beam epitaxy. The bcc Ni is ferromagnetic with a Curie temperature of 456 K and possesses a magnetic moment of 0.52+/-0.08 micro(B)/atom. The cubic magnetocrystalline anisotropy of bcc Ni is determined to be +4.0x10(5) ergs x cm(-3), as opposed to -5.7x10(4) ergs x cm(-3) for the naturally occurring face-centered-cubic (fcc) Ni. This sharp contrast in the magnetic anisotropy is attributed to the different electronic band structures between bcc Ni and fcc Ni, which are determined using angle-resolved photoemission with synchrotron radiation.

The Al-doped BiFeO 3 , i.e., BFA x O powder samples with x = 0, 0.025, 0.05, and 0.1, were prepared via the hydrothermal route. The effects of Al substitution on the structural, electrical, and optical properties of BFA x O samples were investigated. It is found that the substitution of Al ions at B-site of BiFeO 3 did not cause structural change and it still retains the rhombohedral perovskite structure with R3c symmetry, which was confirmed by the X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Raman measurements. X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) above the Fe K -edge and Bi L 3 -edge in BFA x O powders was also measured and analyzed. Fe ions exhibit mixed valence states (Fe 2+ /Fe 3+ ) while Bi ions keep the + 3 valence state in all the samples. Fe K -edge XAFS also indicated that there was a competition between hybridization of Fe 3 d and Al 3 d with O 2 p orbitals and occurrence of the more 4 p orbitals with Al doping. The Bi L 3 -edge XAFS revealed that transition from 2 p 3/2 to 6 d state increased, so did the energy of 6 d state. Besides, Al ion doping affected both the nearest-neighbor and next-nearest coordination shells of Fe atom and nearest-neighbor shells of Bi atom. Ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy results show the BFA x O prepared by hydrothermal method could be an appropriate visible-light photocatalytic material.

The electronic state evolution of single bilayer (1BL) Bi(1 1 1) deposited on three-dimensional (3D) Bi2Se x Te3-x topological insulators at x  =  0, 1.26, 2, 2.46, 3 is systematically investigated by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). Our results indicate that the electronic structures of epitaxial Bi films are strongly influenced by the substrate especially the topmost sublayer near the Bi films, manifesting in two main aspects. First, the Se atoms cause a stronger charge transfer effect, which induces a giant Rashba-spin splitting, while the low electronegativity of Te atoms induces a strong hybridization at the interface. Second, the lattice strain notably modifies the band dispersion of the surface bands. Furthermore, our experimental results are elucidated by first-principles band structure calculations.