Magnetic Islands Inside a Crystal
A crystal does not grow as a single whole but like a city of neighborhoods — grains. In each neighborhood, atoms are arranged in their own way, and the boundaries between them are like streets.
An Ion Beam Scalpel for Superconducting Circuits
A potter uses a sharp stylus to trace a pattern on a still-damp clay tile. One wrong move, and the line blurs, the tile cracks. Physicists work with films of the high-temperature superconductor YBCO (a compound of yttrium, barium, copper, and oxygen) in much the same way.