Research

Complex Oxides

As witnessed over the last few decades, advances in complex oxide materials which possess the full spectrum of fascinating properties, including magnetism, colossal magneto-resistance, superconductivity, ferroelectricity, electronic and ionic conductivity, and electrocatalytic activity have led to remarkable breakthroughs in energy, environmental, and information devices such as transistors, light emitting devices, chemical sensors, fuel cells, batteries, thermoelectric devices, and high T_c superconductors.

Materials Design by Pulsed Laser Deposition

The controlled synthesis of a wide variety of oxide crystals via epitaxial growth is a powerful way to design thin films and nanostructures with atomic level precision, enabling material architecture with remarkable physicochemical properties and functionalities. Therefore, complex oxide thin films and nanoscale structures have attracted much attention from many researchers to devote efforts to understand the growth mechanisms and to fabricate better devices. In this framework, pulsed laser deposition (PLD) is one of the most promising techniques for the formation of complex oxide heterostructures, new types of nanostructures, superlattices, and well controlled interfaces.

Oxide Thin Films and Heterostructures

With PLD system, we can design new oxide nanostructured thin films by controlling the atomic unit cells. So far, oxide thin films have been utilized as model systems for the understanding of the fundamental physicochemical properties and the development of design principles for energy applications. This atomic scale synthesis of oxide thin films offers new opportunities to create novel functionalities that cannot be achieved from bulk oxide materials. We can reduce the complexity that can enable fundamental mechanism studies and can easily control the compositions and morphology. In addition, we can create new phenomena by forming heterostructured interfaces.

Energy Applications by Designing Oxides

PLD has been tremendously successful in designing new oxide nanostructured thin films. Moreover, many growth parameters such as laser fluence, wavelength, pulse duration, repetition rate, background gas pressure, substrate temperature can be manipulated during PLD, thus enabling material properties to be easily adjusted as desired. PLD can also be used to fabricate heterostructured multilayers (superlattices) and a variety of isolated columnar structures (1D nanostructures) that cannot be done by any other film deposition techniques. Establishing and understanding a new class of nanostructured oxide materials will enable a breakthrough in the development of energy conversion and storage devices.

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