Graduate Student Seminar

December 01, 2023

12:00 p.m. ET

Scaife Hall 105

Prospecting for New Magnetic Materials

Magnetic materials are essential for energy generation and information devices. They also play an important role in advanced technologies and green energy economies. Most commercial magnets contain rare earth elements, which are considered a critical resource. An outstanding challenge of notable scientific interest is the discovery and synthesis of novel magnetic materials, which do not contain rare earth elements; yet, meet the performance and cost goals for advanced electro-magnetic devices.

I will discuss the synthesis of a heretofore unknown rare earth-free magnetic compound by integrating machine learning, an adaptive genetic algorithm, first-principles calculations, and experimental synthesis. Magnetic measurements show that this newly discovered material exhibits a high magnetic anisotropy and saturation magnetic polarization, which is suitable for permanent-magnet applications. Our machine learning-guided approach presents a promising pathway for efficient materials design and discovery, and can be applied to the search for other functional materials.

Ref. Xia, et al. PNAS 119 (47) e2204485119 (2022).

James R. Chelikowsky, W.A. “Tex” Moncrief, Jr. Chair of Computational Materials, Center for Computational Materials, Oden Institute of Computational Engineering and Sciences, Department of Physics and McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin

Chelikowsky received a BS from Kansas State University and a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley, both degrees in physics. Before assuming the Tex Moncrief Chair in Computational Materials at Texas in 2005, he worked at the University of Minnesota for almost 20 years. His research is focused on computational applications of quantum theory to understand, design and discover properties of materials. His work has been recognized by the David Turnbull Award from the Materials Research Society, the David Adler Award and the Aneesur Rahman Prize from the American Physical Society , the John Bardeen Award from The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society, and most recently the Feynman Prize in Theory from the Foresight Institute.

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