Materials show remarkably different properties when they adopt different structures. Many new materials are predicted to have exciting electronic properties, but have never been made. Efforts to fabricate materials in specific structures generally use trial-and-error, low-throughput processes that inhibit the discovery, development, and ultimate deployment of materials in technology. In this project, a novel high-throughput structure-directing fabrication method is being explored to make a short list of breakthrough materials expected to impact energy and information technologies. Specifically, thin layers of a material are deposited simultaneously on hundreds to thousands of novel surfaces, and the structural relationships between the thin layers and all surfaces are efficiently determined. The structure-directing surfaces are tailored to favor specific target materials. Using this method, the research team is establishing the scientific underpinnings of materials stability, discovering new materials, and accelerating the development cycle of electronic materials. The investigators are incorporating research outcomes in undergraduate and graduate courses and developing technology enhanced learning tools for delivery of primary content and practice of essential skills. Specifically, a web/app interface is being developed to replace the traditional passive textbook experience with an interactive learning environment moving at the student's pace.
A high-throughput epitaxial film growth methodology is being used to produce entirely new electronic materials - previously unrealized, metastable complex oxides. The method is called combinatorial substrate epitaxy, and investigators are using this to study local epitaxial growth on hundreds to thousands of different kinds of surfaces. The research team prepares their own novel substrates as polished surfaces of sintered ceramics and specifically tailor them to support the fabrication of new materials predicted to exhibit exciting electronic properties. Electron backscatter diffraction is used as a high-throughput local structural probe and pulsed laser deposition as a material flexible film growth method. By exploring rapidly large regions of epitaxial synthesis space, the preferred epitaxial orientations between film-substrate structural pairs are determined and comprehensive epitaxial stability maps that plot phase as a function of processing conditions are established. The research team thus identifies the substrates and growth conditions that allow one to synthesize epitaxially a given composition in a specific crystal structure. The project is establishing the empirical scientific underpinnings of epitaxial stabilization, which enables the accelerated discovery of materials and their deployment in technologies. The investigators target the discovery of several specific breakthrough compounds expected to be exciting electrodes, ferroelectrics, and multiferroics.
