Vision
Create and understand materials that transform scientific, energy, and information landscapes.
Mission
Lead research in inorganic crystalline materials development and condensed-matter physics that answers key scientific questions related to quantum materials and enables advances in science and technology across the ORNL materials portfolio and beyond.
R&D Scope
The Correlated Electron Materials group’s primary focus is fundamental quantum materials research, encompassing materials synthesis, characterization, and neutron scattering. We identify promising candidate materials and produce high-quality samples, usually as single crystals, and study their fundamental properties, interactions, ground states, excitations, and phase transitions. Our aim is to understand how ground states can be controlled using chemical manipulation, temperature, and applied fields to allow access to particular physics and behaviors. Our current interests span quantum and topological magnetic materials, topological electronic materials, 2D magnetism, kagome physics, and the effects of electronic correlations and disorder. Our work is highly collaborative, and we benefit strongly from interactions with other groups in our section, division, and across ORNL, including our local user facilities, SNS, HFIR, and CNMS.
Core Competencies
- Identifying and developing model materials designed to address forefront physics questions and energy/information applications
- Crystal growth and chemical tuning to enable access to physics of interest
- Characterization of crystallographic and physical properties to provide foundational understanding of material behaviors
- Neutron scattering measurements and modeling to study lattice and magnetic structures, excitations, and underlying interactions