Page 13 - CEMS News Winter 2023

FACULTY NEWS
Leighton leads MRSEC continued from page 12
MRSEC’s researchers conduct cutting-edge materials research that enables important areas of future technology, ranging from biomedicine and electronics to security and renewable energy.
Preparing the next generation of scientists and engineers is also a top priority for the University’s MRSEC. MRSEC investigators provide extensive research experiences
for promising undergraduates from a national network
of four-year colleges, minority-serving institutions, and especially tribal colleges. Summer camps for high school
students, drawn from the Twin Cities and from Native American communities across the upper Midwest, involve senior investigators, students, and postdoctoral fellows
in hands-on laboratory activities. MRSEC also supports entertaining demonstration shows, which illustrate fundamental scientific principles to engage more than 50,000 K-12 students each year.
News release written by Rhonda Zurn, College of Science and Engineering.
CEMS research groups achieve new room-temperature functionality
in perovskite oxides
Recent collaborative work from the Chris Leighton, Andre Mkhoyan, and Turan Birol research groups, published in Nature Communications, has achieved the first room- temperature valence transition in a perovskite oxide.
This collaborative team, led by graduate students Vipul Chaturvedi, Supriya Ghosh, and Dominique Gautreau, used strain engineering in epitaxial thin films to tune the properties of complex praseodymium- and cobalt- containing oxides. These materials were previously known to exhibit a unique phase transition driven by a highly unusual change in the valence of the ions, but at cryogenic temperatures. Through strain engineering, the team were able to promote this transition to 291
K, establishing the first example of room-temperature valence control in such materials, with numerous implications.
The work was performed in collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Argonne National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory,
and CSE Characterization Facility, and funded primarily
Experimental temperature (T) vs. “in-plane strain” (εxx) phase diagram for (Pr0.85Y0.15)0.7Ca0.3CoO3-δ.
by the Department of Energy through the University of Minnesota Center for Quantum Materials.
CEMSnews Winter 2023 13