Aldo Romero, West Virginia University, Designing materials: a synergistic process between theory, experiment and belief

Date: Mon. April 22nd, 2019, 12:45 am-1:45 am
Location: Rockefeller 221 (Les Foldy Room)
Website: https://physics.wvu.edu/faculty-and-staff/faculty/aldo-romero

Designing materials: a synergistic process between theory, experiment and belief

Aldo Romero, Dept. of Physics and Atronomy, West Virginia University, Morgantown

The scientific process of designing materials has changed in the last ten years, as now theoretical methods have advanced to the level of becoming predictive, materials databases are increasing in size and experiments are more accurate and detailed. In this synergistic path, methods that combine all these methodologies are ideal, as long as we manage to condense the necessary design details into a series of fundamental material parameters. In this talk, I will discuss the atomistic process to design materials from scratch by using theoretical methods only based on the chemical composition and with little knowledge on the desired material or property of interest. We will demonstrate the power of the methodology by discussing examples from different fields as in topological materials, magnetoelectrics, two dimensional, etc. We will discuss the status of the field and present a personal overview on how the field will be moving in the next few years and how I see students and young faculty can get involved and be part of this evolving field.

 

host Walter Lambrecht