Publications

A publication from Professor Ricardo Castro’s group was highlighted on Materials Today. The team, consisting of Castro’s group and visiting postdoctoral scholar Flavio Souza, found that Chlorine alters electron spin in hematite, showing why the material underperformed expectations in photoelectrochemical cells and proving that spin mobility manipulation is possible.

A team of UC Davis researchers led by Assistant Professor Roopali Kukreja recently published their findings that magnetite’s transition between metal and insulator is a two-step process, instead of a one-step process like previously thought.

Magnetite is a unique material in that depending on temperature, it can either be a metal, which conducts electricity well, or an insulator, which does not. Kukreja’s team investigated this transition, theorizing that it has to do with the arrangement of the material’s electrons, and found this two-step process.

UC Davis materials science and engineering research was featured on the American Ceramic Society (ACerS) website in a recent article. The study, led by doctoral student Arseniy Bokov in Ricardo Castro’s Nanoceramics Thermochemistry Lab, looked at grain boundaries in nanocrystalline ceramics with the goal of improving toughness. The mechanical stability of these materials is important for the performance of battery electrodes and capacitors.

Soft x-ray photoemission electron microscopy was used to observe and characterize the evolution of magnetic domain structure as a function of temperature in micromagnets patterned into epitaxial films of La₀.₇Sr₀.₃MnO₃. These images reveal the formation of novel spin textures that are a hybridization of well-described configurations and emerge from the balance between fundamental materials parameters, micromagnet geometries, and epitaxial strain.

Prof. Mahajan has published an article entitled “The role of materials science in the evolution of microelectronics” in the latest MRS Bulletin.  He writes on how materials science solved the critical challenges that allow us to use silicon as we do today and helped bring us into the Silicon Age (a riff off the ‘Bronze Age’ nomenclature, for the period more commonly known as the Information Age).

Professor Ricardo Castro has developed an innovative new series of outreach and teaching materials on materials science & engineering designed for use in K-12 schools. Through Professor Castro’s efforts a new generation of students will seek careers in materials science!