The focus of my research is on the synthesis, atomically precise crystallization, processing, and characterization of novel solid-state materials (metallic compounds and oxides) and their structure-phase-property relationships for emerging energy-related applications. The design and development of advanced materials are central to the study of matter and energy (at the most fundamental level) and essential to the future of humanity and the upcoming challenges for supplying energy and sustaining the environment. The importance of advancing materials, synthesis science, and the precision processing of them into useful forms and dimensionalities has been recently highlighted as an enabling capability for electrical energy storage and transportation, catalysis, carbon capture, and quantum technologies in the energy sector. In addition to creating sustainable solid-state materials, our work also involves the engineering of materials with disorder, defects, and active sites, which are crucial in defining material properties, e.g., the manipulation of defects underlies the development of the modern computer industry, battery science, and solid oxide fuel cells. 

My research area is well placed at the interface between the two platforms of ‘predictive design and discovery’ and ‘detailed physical characterization and technological applications’.

To uncover the remarkable physical properties of quantum materials, my research is indeed in close collaboration with other experimental and theoretical research groups, mainly in condensed matter physics at JHU, and other research institutions/universities in the USA and worldwide. This multidisciplinary joint research is of great importance to study/understand how the astonishing properties of quantum materials can be tailored to address our most pressing technological needs.