Title: Interface Engineered Complex Oxides for Energy Harvest and Control Systems

Speaker: Chonglin Chen , University of Texas at San Antonio

Time: 9:00 a.m., June 20, 2013

Venue: Qiushi Hall, Liwu Building, SCUT North Campus

Sponsor: School of Materials Science and Engineering

Abstract: Interfaces, defined from crystalline/electronic/magnetic phases, structures, and compositions, have become the critical issues in the new materials science and engineering as well as technological development. In particular, complex oxides have shown various important physical properties from thermal, mechanical, electronic, magnetic, optical, and the enriched combinations of these different properties to tunable and designable multifunctionalities. Therefore, integrating complex oxides directly on semiconductors and/or structural materials is therefore a dream of new materials research and technological development, which may also result in the discovery of new materials properties with controllable functionality and tunability. However, the surface oxidation on semiconductor or/metal surfaces become the road blocks on new multifunctional materials research. The recent successful fabrications of complex oxides such as ferroelectric BaTiO3 and BaTiO3/SrTiO3 multilayered structures directly on metallic Ni and semiconductor Si surfaces by using interface engineered nanofabrication technique has opened a new avenue for the integration of complex oxides on semiconductors and structural metallic materials. Also, the discovery of superfast chemical dynamics on highly epitaxial LnBaCo2O5.5 thin film surface is not only fundamental scientific interest but also technological important. These revolutionary developments will have great impact on various modern device developments, such as self-powered structural health monitoring systems, intermediate temperature thin film solid oxide fuel cells, tunable laser systems, and many others. Details will be discussed in the talk.

Introduction to Prof. Chonglin Chen: Dr. C. L. Chen is currently a professor of physics at the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the University of Texas at San Antonio and a joint professor at the Texas Center for Superconductivity at the University of Houston (TcSUH). He received his Ph. D. degree in solid state science (Materials) from the Pennsylvania State University in 1994. He was awarded as the Director’s Funded Post-doctoral Fellow in the Los Alamos National Laboratory before he became a faculty member at TcSUH in May 1996. His research interests have spanned over the areas of multifunctional oxide thin film epitaxy, nanostructure fabrication, surface and interface physics and chemistry, and modeling developments. He has authored and/or coauthored more than 130 refereed papers appeared in Nature, Physical Review Letters, Applied Physics Letters, Nanoletters, and others, and delivered about 200 plenary lectures/invited talks at various international/national conferences (MRS, ACerS, IMRUS, etc.), universities, and research institutes. He has served as several international advisory board members in various international conferences, chairs and/or co-chairs in various international and national symposiums such as the American Ceramics Society, Materials Science and Engineering, and others. His researches have been supported by NSF-NIRT and CMS programs, Department of Energy, Army Research Office, the Texas Advanced Research Program, the State of Texas through the TcSUH, and various government labs, etc.