Our major research goal is to uncover the underlying electronic, atomic, and microscopic interactions in novel rare-earth intermetallic materials with extraordinarily strong coupling between the magnetic, electronic, and lattice degrees of freedom that drive remarkable responsiveness to external stimuli, like temperature, pressure, and magnetic field. These materials exhibit unique magnetic and electronic behaviors, associated with magneto-structural and magnetic-elastic transformations, that are specific to lanthanides and can lead to future innovations in energy generation, conversion, and harvesting, as well as development of spintronic-based devices. The overarching objective is to both understand the composition-structure-property relations of rare earth materials with strong spin-lattice coupling and build fundamental concepts governing their magneto-responsive behavior, which emerges from complex correlations of the atomic and electronic constituents. We focus on 4f-electron intermetallic systems—RScT, R2T, R7Pd3 (R is a rare-earth metal, and T is Group 13-15 metal or metalloid)—known to exhibit strong relationships between their crystallographic and electronic structures and magnetic ground states. These compounds, synthesized in bulk and thin film form, show rich physics, yet remain simple enough to develop predictive modeling tools gauged against reliable experimental data. The basic understanding of how to predictively tune the interplay between spin and atomic lattices and manipulate magnetic and electronic behaviors of rare earth materials to make them strongly responsive to external stimuli is in the focus of this research, which will be crucial for guiding the predictive design of advanced energy materials.
Project Members:
Principal Investigator: Yaroslav Mudryk
Co-PIs: Anis Biswas, Duane Johnson, Prashant Singh
Scientific Support Staff: Devo Shlagel
Technician: Roger Rink
Postdoc: Ajay Kumar