CEMS graduate students win awards at the Minnesota American Vacuum Society Symposium

Graduate students Anusha Kamath Manjeshwar (5^th year) and Shivasheesh Varshney (3^rd year), both advised by CEMS Professor Bharat Jalan, won awards for their research presentations at the Minnesota American Vacuum Society (AVS) Symposium.

Anusha won first place and an $800 travel award to attend the AVS National Conference for her presentation on using solid source metal-organic molecular beam epitaxy to simplify the synthesis of SrRuO₃  films. These films are sought after for the study of exotic electromagnetic phenomena, but their synthesis has been a long-standing challenge due to ruthenium which is both difficult-to-evaporate and oxidize. Kamath and coworkers show that using metal-organic precursors to supply ruthenium effectively tackles both challenges and opens an adsorption-controlled growth window where the films can self-regulate their stoichiometry within a range of cationic flux ratios. With this automatic stoichiometry control, they can now synthesize SrRuO₃ films with some of the lowest defect densities on SrTiO₃ (001) substrates.

Shivasheesh won third place and a digital microscope for his work on developing free-standing membranes of perovskite oxides using a water-soluble sacrificial layer of a simpler composition and crystal structure than conventionally used. Varshney and coworkers demonstrated the synthesis of single crystalline, epitaxial membranes of SrTiO₃ with bulk-like structural, electrical, and optical properties.

Congratulations Anusha and Shivasheesh!