Seminar Speaker: Veerle Keppens, UT Knoxville

“Compositionally complex oxides: synthesis, characterization, challenges, and opportunities”

Abstract

High entropy oxides (HEOs), also referred to as multicomponent oxides or compositionally complex oxides (CCOs), have attracted attention due to the tunability of multiple cations on a single site. Since the introduction in 2015 of HEOs stabilized in the rocksalt phase, the high entropy oxide concept has been expanded to various structures, including fluorites, perovskites, and spinels. Here, we report on our recent efforts to engineer new ceramic materials by applying the concept of entropy stabilization to complex oxides. More specifically, by adding the chemical and structural disorder inherent to entropy-stabilized materials to the competing electronic/magnetic interactions that characterize complex oxides, we provide a new strategy for the design/discovery of materials with unique properties.

Speaker Biography

Veerle Keppens earned her bachelor’s degree (1989) and Ph.D. (1995) in Physics from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium). From 1995 to 1998, Dr. Keppens was a Fulbright fellow in the novel materials group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where she became interested in the elastic properties of new materials. In 1999, she joined the faculty in the Physics Department at The University of Mississippi. In 2003, she moved back to Tennessee and joined the faculty in the materials science and engineering department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) where she continues to study the elastic properties and lattice dynamics of novel materials. At UT, she has received multiple awards at the departmental, college, and campus level, and in 2011 she became a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America for the application of ultrasonics to materials physics. She served as the associate dean for faculty affairs from August 2012 till October 2016. In 2015, she became the department head for the department of Materials Science and Engineering. In fall 2019, she was appointed as a Chancellor’s Professor, the highest lifetime honor that can be accorded to a member of the faculty of UTK.