CEMS graduate students win awards at the Minnesota American Vacuum Society Symposium
Graduate students Anusha Kamath Manjeshwar (5th year) and Shivasheesh Varshney (3rd 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!