Synthesis Science

Metastable Materials

Controlled synthesis of metastable solid-state materials away from thermodynamic equilibrium is a significant scientific challenge with important implications to electronic technologies and energy conversion. The reciprocal challenge is how to synthesize thermodynamically stable structures using kinetically limited thin-film deposition methods, that are often used in manufacturing but tend to favor metastable material polymorphs. This research area addresses both questions.

For more information, see:

Synthesis Pathways to Thin Films of Stable Layered Nitrides, Nature Synthesis (2024)

Role of Disorder in the Synthesis of Metastable Zinc Zirconium Nitrides, Physical Review Materials (2022)

Two-Step Solid-State Synthesis of Ternary Nitride Materials, ACS Materials Letters (2021)

Combinatorial Synthesis of Magnesium Tin Nitride Semiconductors,  J. Am. Chem Soc. (2020)

Zn₂SbN₃: Growth and Characterization of a Metastable Photoactive Semiconductor, Materials Horizons (2019).

Nitride Materials

Nitride materials feature many useful properties such as blue LEDs used in energy-efficient lighting or hard coatings used in industrial manufacturing. However, there are many fewer nitride materials compared to other chemistries because nitrides can be very difficult to synthesize using traditional methods. This research area focuses on synthesis of new nitride materials using facile thin-film deposition methods as well as innovative ion exchange bulk synthesis reactions.

For more information, see:

Low-Temperature Synthesis of Cation-Ordered Bulk Zn₃WN₄ Semiconductor via Heterovalent Solid-State Metathesis, Chemical Science (2024)

Zinc Titanium Nitride Semiconductor Toward Durable Photoelectrochemical Applications, Journal of the American Chemical Society (2022)

Experimental Synthesis of Theoretically Predicted Multivalent Ternary Nitride Materials, Chemistry of Materials (2021)

Synthesis of LaWN₃ Nitride Perovskite with Polar Symmetry, Science (2021).

Layered Materials

Layered materials offer the opportunity to design material properties using interactions occurring at nanometer length scales. In principle, the 2D layers in these materials can be arbitrarily sequenced to optimize the heterostructure's properties for a given purpose, but this conventional preparation cannot be easily employed in economic manufacturing environments. We are developing scalable, large-area synthesis science to prepare such heterostructures using conventional thin-film processing technology. In addition, we are synthesizing naturally layered 2D-like materials that can feature 2D electronic and magnetic properties without the trouble of synthesizing truly 2D materials.

For more information, see:

Synthesis Pathways to Thin Films of Stable Layered Nitrides, Nature Synthesis (2024)

Bulk and Film Synthesis Pathways to Ternary Magnesium Tungsten Nitrides, Journal of Materials Chemistry C (2023)

Synthesis of Tunable SnS-TaS₂ Nanoscale Superlattices, Nano Letters (2020).