The radiation performance of a variety of complex oxides is predicted on the basis of a material's propensity to accommodate lattice point defects. The calculations indicate that a particular class of oxides possessing the fluorite crystal structure should accept radiation-induced defects into their lattices far more readily than a structurally similar class of oxides based on the pyrochlore crystal structure. Preliminary radiation damage experiments substantiate the prediction that fluorites are inherently more radiation resistant than pyrochlores. These results may permit the chemical durability and radiation tolerance of potential hosts for actinides and radioactive wastes to be tailored.

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Solid-supported lipid membranes represent a valuable tool to determine physiologically relevant lipid-water partitioning data of pharmaceuticals in an automated setup and is well suited for high-throughput data generation in lead optimization programs.

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We investigated the temperature-dependent magnetoresistance of granular (Ga,Mn)As/MnAs hybrids grown on (100) GaAs in different transport geometries. The observed magnetoresistance effects are much bigger than for a corresponding (Ga,Mn)As reference sample without MnAs nanoclusters. We find that the magnetoresistance effects depend strongly on the chosen transport geometry. When the external field is perpendicular to the sample plane the effects are largest. The smallest effects occur when the external field is in the sample plane and parallel to the current. Furthermore, we have established by ferromagnetic resonance studies that the magnetic properties of the ensemble of ferromagnetic MnAs nanoclusters is similar for the magnetic field orientations studied. Therefore, the observed anisotropy of the magnetoresistance mainly reflects the difference in current path through the sample which leads to a variation of the degree of interaction between the free carriers in the matrix and nanoclusters.

We discuss advances, advantages and problems of spintronics through the example of a semiconductor laser whose emission intensity and polarization are modulated by the spin orientation of electrons. We show that spin transport should be feasible at room temperature and present possible concepts and first results concerning spin injection at high temperatures. Finally, we describe the coherent dynamics of coupled electron and hole spins in a quantum mechanical picture and measure the magnetic field-induced dynamics of localized excitons in a 3 nm GaAs quantum well. The system is capable of performing a quantum controlled not operation (CNOT), which realizes a basic two-qubit operation of quantum information processing in a semiconductor nanostructure.