ABSTRACT

NON-TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION: This project addresses the ongoing challenge to discover new materials that respond to societal needs through the new and interesting properties they provide, and the new scientific information that they reveal. The world depends upon a rapidly evolving set of modern technologies that are routinely enabled by advanced materials. Maintaining this progress requires an ever-expanding set of candidates that accompany and facilitate new designs. Currently, the research community at large is engaged in this process, and is doing so in many cases using the power of computational tools. The present activity is investigating an alternative strategy where configurational entropy - engineered by composition - is used to imagine and create a new class of solid crystals. While the approach is generic to all material types, this research focuses on oxide ceramics, with particular attention to those interesting to electronic applications. During the course of research, it is likely that new materials of importance to energy storage and microelectronic devices will result from this work.

TECHNICAL DETAILS: This project is exploring how configurational disorder can be engineered through composition so the entropic contributions to free energy predominate the minimization and thus stabilization process. Specific objectives include quantifying the strength of entropic stabilization, extending the stabilization concept to ternary systems, using thin film deposition techniques to quench in extreme high entropy structures, and exploring how configurational entropy can influence phase transformations. This research is an important complement to modern computation-led efforts such as the Materials Genome Initiative, which address the grand challenge of finding new materials that become the foundation of new technologies. Current indications suggest that entropic stabilization is prominent in oxides and that many new phases and thus new opportunities for new properties are present. If so, the impacts will be transformational as a new avenue for material development will be presented to the research community. A full-time graduate student and part-time (between semesters) undergraduate student is supported and mentored. The students and PI are participating in regional activities that encourage pre-college student engagement in science and engineering, and thus contribute to a robust and diverse future scientific cohort.

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