Prof. Robert Joseph Cava once again at the Faculty - 02.12.2021 | Faculty of Applied Physics and Mathematics at the Gdańsk University of Technology

Professor Robert J. Cava is the author of numerous scientific publications. He graduated from Materials Science and Engineering at MIT, where he also obtained his PhD degree. Currently, he works at Princeton University, where he holds the title of Russell Wellman Moore Professor of Chemistry. His research group works on new non-molecular inorganic solids of interesting electronic and magnetic properties.

This time, Professor Cava will give us an online lecture on materials engineering - Finding New Materials – a Chemical Perspective. Although the classes are scheduled for the graduate students of Materials Engineering and Nanotechnology, all of the Gdańsk Tech students and staff members are invited to join the meeting, during which new geometrically frustrated magnets, new quantum spin liquid candidates, gold compounds, and hexagonal perovskites will be discussed. A detailed abstract of the lecture is given below.

Time: Thursday, Dec 2, 2021 03:00 pm

link to the meeting: https://zoom.us/j/98475598966?pwd=Y1kxSmxpR2NGbWpyWHdhSVVWaTlHdz09

Meeting ID: 984 7559 8966 

Passcode: 90Dri4

This lecture will be conducted within the frame of the POWER 3.5 project of the Integrated Development Program of Gdańsk University of Technology.  Soon, thanks to the same project, we will have a pleasure to take part in the classes run by Professor Tuson Park, from Sungkyunkwan University, and Professor Weiwei Xie, from Rutgers University. All of these excellent scientists were invited to our university by Professor Tomasz Klimczuk, who collaborates with our guests on a great variety of research projects.  

Abstract:

Finding new materials that are of interest in the community of materials physicists is, in my view, best done by using the insights and tools of solid state chemistry to direct exploratory synthesis towards finding materials with potentially new electronic and magnetic properties. Unfortunately, however, most solid state chemists do not feel comfortable with the language of physics, and further compounding the disconnect between physics and chemistry, materials physicists do not in general understand the complexities of chemistry and its language. Theoretical physicists, who I personally find to be lots of fun, seem even further in research culture from “bench chemists”, making chemical research even harder to aim towards forefront physics though it is the theorists who most often live in gardens of untested ideas. In this talk I plan to describe materials in several different chemical families that we have worked on in recent years - found from a distinctly chemical perspective, I think, with their potential significance to materials physics in mind.  Some of them you may find interesting and others not so interesting. The main idea is to keep trying, propose and find new materials to see what sticks, welcome collaborations, and never give up.