Special Seminars
2011 ACS Award in Inorganic Chemistry
Sponsored by The Aldrich Chemical Co., Inc.
Friday, November 4, 2011
Northwestern University
Technological Institute - Tech LR3
2145 Sheridan Road - Evanston, IL
Key Presenter
Professor Robert J. Cava
Princeton University
Refreshments--3:30 p.m.
Welcome & Introduction of Speaker
Professor Mercouri Kanatzidis--4:00 p.m.
Northwestern University
Professor Robert J. Cava - 4:05 p.m.
Princeton University
"Dimer Formation and the Magnetic Properties of Superconductor-related Pnictides"
Abstract
Determining how crystal structure and chemical bonding influence the properties of solids is at the heart of collaborative research programs between materials physicists and solid state chemists. In some important electronic materials - the high Tc copper oxides and colossal magnetoresistance manganates for example - stoichiometry, structure, bonding, and properties are coupled to yield an almost baffling complexity of chemistry-physics relationships, while in others, such as many classical intermetallic superconductors, bonding and structure play a much less profound role. The new superconducting iron pnictides, the materials with the second highest known superconducting transition temperatures after the high Tc cuprates, appear to fall somewhere between these two limits, and thus their complexities might at first be easily overlooked. Here I will describe some of our recent work on superconductor-related cobalt-based ThCr2Si2-type solid solution phases as examples of the kinds of insights that structural and chemical studies can contribute to understanding the electronic properties of important electronic materials.
Robert Cava Biographical sketch
Robert Cava is currently a Professor in Chemistry and Materials at Princeton University. He began at Princeton in 1997 after working at Bell Laboratories for 17 years, where he was a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff. He received his undergraduate degree in Materials Science and his Ph.D. in Ceramics from MIT, after which he was a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Ceramic Society, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Professor Cava’s research involves the search for and synthesis of non-molecular solids with the goal of finding new materials with exotic electronic and magnetic properties. A major part of his research is in exploring the properties and structures of ternary and quaternary 4d and 5d transition metal oxides – materials that fall at the border between magnetic and non-magnetic low temperature electronic states. Such materials often display unexpected electronic properties. Other major areas of research are new superconductors, new thermoelectrics, and new geometrically frustrated magnets. Cava is the author of 500+ publications,15 patents, and has over 30,000 citations.
Professor Cava has been the recipient of the New Materials and Inorganic Chemistry prizes of the American Chemical Society, the De-Shalit Memorial Lectureship at the Weizmann Institute, the Villum Foundation Visiting Foreign Professorship in Denmark, the Medal of Remembrance of the University of Gdansk, the R.J.P. Williams Lectureship at Oxford University, and the John J. Carty Award for the Advancement of Science from the National Academy of Sciences. At Princeton, he has been a recent recipient of the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award and three teaching awards from the Princeton Engineering Council.
