What is your thesis topic?
Integrating epitaxial and in situ anisotropic strain for magnetoelastic control of a Jeff = 1⁄2 antiferromagnet (AF).
How is materials processing involved in your research?
My research is focused on applying strain as an external perturbation to complex oxides and studying its effect on the magnetic behavior and other transport properties. We perform layer by layer thin film growth of complex oxide materials using pulsed laser deposition (PLD) on a substrate that is chosen with a deliberate lattice mismatch, which ultimately induces epitaxial strain on the film. In situ strain are then applied with the help of strain cells on such epitaxially strained thin films, which enables us to fine tune the applied strain on the system. The materials processing is involved not only in the growth process of the thin films but also its characterization, study of the transport properties, and x-ray diffraction study.
Provide an example of where the material, process, or properties you are studying might find an application.
One example would be Sr2IrO4, a 5d iridate system with Jeff = ½ AFM Mott insulating behavior. Studying the strain effect on magnetic behavior of this material, we found that a metamagnetic transition can be significantly driven with the application of in situ strain. Conversely, such a strain can do robust switching between two different magnetic phases, i.e., AF and FM. The study might find an application where the magnetic behavior of a material needs to be fine-tuned without applying external field.