Materials World Network for the Discovery of Low Conductivity Oxides by Integrated Simulation and Experimentation

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This Materials World Network award is for a joint research and education program between participants in the US, China and England to use a combined experimental and simulation approach to discover materials with much lower thermal conductivity than those currently known, and to seek correlations with other phonon-dominated property measurements, such as elastic moduli and Raman spectra. In addition, to developing both experimental and simulation skills through research collaborations with the participating faculty in the network, an integral part of the education of the participating students is to give them a strong global perspective on science and its practice by performing part of their research studies in two other institutions, one in China and the other in England. The basis of the scientific approach is to combine state-of-the art simulations with both traditional synthesis and processing of ceramics together with combinatorial approaches exploring compositional variations to provide a more rapid discovery path. The simulations will be carried out under the guidance of Professor Simon Phillpot at the University of Florida in conjunction with Professor Robin Grimes at Imperial College. The experimental portions of the research will be guided by Professor David Clarke, at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Professor W. Pan at Tsinghua University, Beijing. The emphasis will be on complex, fluorite-derived structures and perovskite-related layered structures because of their inherent ability to accommodate a wide range of different ions and ionic sizes and their crystalline anisotropy. Together these offer the prospect of very low and / or strongly anisotropic thermal conductivities. Initially, the research will focus on the pyrochlore and delta-phase compounds as well as on the Ruddleston-Popper phases and then use the findings to select more complex layered compounds. This award is co-funded by the Office of International Science and Engineering