High pressure functional materials

High pressure functional materials which display optical, electrical, magnetic, dielectiric, and thermal properties, are ubiquitous and play an essential role in our daily lives. This is apparent from the silicon chip with its ever-increasing power, the light-emitting materials at the heart of today's telecommunications or DVD players, piezoelectric materials widely used in ultrasound imaging and therapeutics, and the magnetic materials used in recording devices. New materials with improved functionality and more than one degree of functionality providing even more applications have been in increasingly high demand.

Pressure is a unique and powerful tuning tool which can alter atomic and electronic structure over a large range, thus easily modify all kinds of the properties of materials, and pressure can even push their properties to the limits which are not accessible or feasible for other means. High pressure is a promising approach to achieve the highest Tc for superconductor, the highest thermal conductivity, the strongest piezoelectric, thermoelectric effect, etc. Our research aims to understand how to manipulate functional materials properties and synthesize novel materials with unique functionality using high pressure.