Happy to announce that our group received a Department of Energy Early Career Research Program (DoE ECRP) award (Correlated Electron Materials with Novel Quantum Building Blocks, DOE DE-SC0026069; of 875K/5years) through the Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics program 🎉, as part of Materials Science and Engineering - Basic Energy Sciences. This also marks one of two grants we've received this year, the other being an NSF grant on photoluminescent oxyhalides in collaboration with Sara Skrabalak 's group.
The proposal I submitted was beyond anything I would have thought of when I started my position as faculty, and is the result of the creative contributions of our group members. When I started two and a half years ago, I thought I'd always keep up and be able to do what my students are doing. I gave up on that idea after a year.
This work focuses on correlated quantum materials where the relevant orbital and spin states are not the conventional d- or f- orbitals, or even flatbands arising from frustration, but molecular orbitals in a cluster in a solid (e.g. Nb3Cl8).
We took the picture to the left in July, when I had just found out about the award and announced it to the group. So I would like to highlight some group member contributions.
From left to right, after me there's:
Madison Genslinger (yr 1) - started this July, and already developed new directions in how quantum materials bond, and how bonding in them can be represented. She's already pushing us beyond the original award.
Varsha Kumari (Yr 3)- who started the project in the group, and gave us insight into these materials' symmetry and what makes them exist to begin with. You can see her work here: https://lnkd.in/gayK28mM
Dr BIPASA SAMANTA - who gave important feedback for the proposal, and pushed our group in the study of correlated oxides.
Md. Rajbanul Akhond (Yr 2)- his development of graph representations to identify these materials, and resulting database, were a foundational component for the proposal; we are *years* ahead of schedule with his work. You can already explore his database here. Wait for the periodic table to load and click on Nb and Cl for example: https://lnkd.in/gaPp2rbx
Dr Mai Nguyen - our newest postdoc, is studying the mechanism by which these materials can be electrochemically doped, and their correlated states be controlled.
Carina Jacobson (junior undergrad student at Purdue) - work on doping correlated electron materials with He brought us multiple collaborations.