CEMS graduate student Rashmi Choudhary wins prestigious Ovshinsky Student Travel Award

Rashmi Choudhary, a fourth-year materials science graduate student in the Jalan group, has won the prestigious Ovshinsky Student Travel Award to participate in the 2023 American Physical Society (APS) March Meeting, sponsored by the Division of Materials Physics. Choudhary will present her work on developing a novel molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) technique for atomically-precise synthesis of SrIrO₃ films, a widely studied material owing to its strain-dependent electronic transport properties, large catalytic activity toward oxygen evolution reaction, and exotic quantum behavior. Choudhary focuses on tuning these properties via ion-gel gating. To provide a context, a conventional MBE synthesis of iridium based thin films has been extremely challenging due to high temperatures (>2000^˚C) required to evaporate iridium and high oxygen pressures required to oxidize the iridium metal. Choudhary and coworkers resolved both these issues by using an organometallic iridium precursor, which has a high vapor pressure and comes in a pre-oxidized state. Their research paves a pathway for synthesis of perovskite iridate films with the same ease and control that is afforded for III-V compound semiconductors using a conventional MBE approach.