materials Xploration - on the discovery of new materials
High-pressure materials genome - taking materials discovery to the next level Many known materials are not thermodynamically stable, but exist as metastable states which are kinetically protected. This behavior is analogous…
Higher pressure ⇒ denser packing ⇒ better superconductivity! Recently, we had reported the discovery of novel Cu-Bi phases at elevated pressures. Both the Cu11Bi7 and CuBi compounds have unexpected low densities, with…
How to force elements to bond Most non-elemental materials that we know have been synthesized using chemical processes that occur at conditions close to what we call "ambient", meaning with temperatures within a few hundred…
Discovery of ultralow thermal conductivity in new Heusler compounds Semiconducting half and, to a lesser extent, full Heusler compounds are promising thermoelectric materials due to their compelling electronic properties…
LASSP Special Seminar - Cornell In silico materials design: porous high-pressure intermetallics and rattling Heusler compounds. I will give a talk on my recent reserach results at the Cornell University. The talk will…
Kickoff I am delighted to announce the launch of Materials X, my personal platform reporting on discoveries in the area of materials exploration.
How to force elements to bond Most non-elemental materials that we know have been synthesized using chemical processes that occur at conditions close to what we call "ambient", meaning with temperatures within a few hundred…
Welcome to Materials X!
My name is Maximilian Amsler and I am a researcher in the field of materials exploration. Using computational methods, I discover, design and study the properties of various materials. My research takes place in an interdisciplinary environment, where physics, chemistry and materials science meet to investigate exciting phenomena in condensed matter.
Metastable materials, phases that are kinetically trapped in an energetically unfavorable state, offer a tremendous playground to discover new compounds with fascinating properties. In the past, I was primarily studying pressure as a thermodynamic tuning knob to synthesize such metastable materials, and the recent discovery of the first quasi-room-temperature superconductor LaH10 has impressively demonstrated the Read More ...
High-performance computing infrastructures are essential for my everyday tasks to solve complex numerical problems within reasonable time. My work relies on large supercomputers, which consist of hundreds or thousands of interconnected compute nodes and are shared among many other scientists. HPCwire, the leading publication for news and information for the high performance computing community, recently Read More ...
Many known materials are not thermodynamically stable, but exist as metastable states which are kinetically protected. This behavior is analogous to a skier in a mountainous terrain on a downhill trajectory: ultimately, he is bound to end up at the bottom of the hills (ground state, the lowest point in the mountain range), but he Read More ...
The surface of our earth only exposes a fraction of matter the planet is made of, and most of it lies below the earth’s crust, where the pressure and temperatures differ significantly from ambient conditions. At the core of the earth, the pressures are as high as 360 GPa, more than three million times the Read More ...
Materials properties are very closely linked to the underlying crystal structure, the way how atoms or molecules are arranged in the crystal lattice. The knowledge of the atomic arrangement is the very first and most important information one needs to study and understand a material. Crystal structure prediction (CSP) methods are techniques to determine the Read More ...
Superconductivity, the phenomenon of vanishing electrical resistivity, was first discovered by the Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes in 1911 when he was able to produce liquid helium and cool mercury down to below 4.2 K. At that time, it was not known how the conductivity of a metal would behave if the temperature was reduced Read More ...
At the beginning of the current century we are facing massive challenges due to the increasing global demand for energy, focused on two major issues. On one hand, conventional fossil fuel resources such as oil, natural gas and coal are limited and dwindling. On the other hand, the emissions due to combustion of fossil fuels Read More ...