Applied physics is basically academic discipline that is somewhat new with handful of universities having separate departments for this field. Oftentimes, the department of applied physics have faculty from physics department as well as engineering departments from the university.
A Separate Team
It is quite common for faculties to host joint appointments in several departments in the university. As a matter of fact, there are growing trends in relation to interdisciplinary research in all fields of science and also formalizing overlap physics and engineering research in form of physics departments at these symptomatic trends.
There are broad research of topics that could be considered as applied physics. A good example of this would be the superconductor development. Superconductors are a kind of material that is capable of conducting electricity without the resistance below certain temperature.
Superconductors
Superconducting magnets are vital for proper function and performance of Magnetic Resonance Imaging or MRI equipment, particle accelerators as well as nuclear magnetic resonance or NMR spectrometers. Research into physical properties and the theory behind superconducting magnets will be deemed as pure physics. The attempts in building better superconductors and also, finding new applications for them on the other hand will be considered as applied physics.