About

Broadly speaking, we are currently interested in problems involving

1. ab initio electronic structure methods
2. many-body methods for electronically interacting systems
3. the physics of transition metal oxides and their interfaces
4. properties of nanostructures, especially nanowires and nanotubes
5. organic/inorganic interfaces for nanoscale photovoltaics applications
6. surface chemistry of and/or on metal oxides

Here is a glimpse of current topics:

• Surfaces and epitaxial interfaces (atomically sharp, coherent and abrupt interfaces between two materials)
  • Dynamics, thermodynamics, and growth of transition metal oxides on semiconductors
  • Interface structure and function of transition metal oxides on semiconductors: e.g. BaO and SrTiO₃ on Si, BaTiO₃ on Ge
  • Engineered oxide/semiconductor interfaces to create ferroelectricity, magnetism, metal-insulator transitions, etc.
  • Oxide-oxide interfaces: novel phenomena such as those seen at SrTiO₃ / LaAlO₃, La_1-xSr_xMnO₃/SrTiO₃, ferroelectric/La_1-xSr_xMnO₃ and rare-earth nickelate interfaces including 2D electron gases, strong orbital polarization, dynamic cross-interface phonon coupling, magneto-electric couplings, orbital ordering, etc.
  • Switchable chemistry and catalysis on ferroelectric surfaces
• Slave-boson methods for correlated electrons in metal oxides
• Ab initio Green’s function methods for dealing with electronic excitations

• Electron excitation, optical response, and photoluminescence
  • Solid-state defects: e.g. bulk silica
  • carbon nanotubes
  • molecules
  • GaN nanotubes and nanowires
• Nanostructures
  • Boron nanotubes and 2D sheets: structure, electronic states, conductivity, etc.
  • Metal-doped boron nanostructures
  • GaN nanotubes
  • Carbon nanotubes
• Organic/inorganic interfaces for photovoltaics: covalently bonded P3HT/ZnO and P3HT/carbon nanotube junctions