Mork Ph.D. student Boyang Zhao grew the strontium titanium sulfide single crystals that were found to have a few more strontium atoms than expected. Those extra atoms increased the material’s repeating structure.
A research team from USC Viterbi’s Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Washington University in St. Louis, has created a unique, record-setting material that can bend one infrared ray of light in two directions.
For the second time in five years, the team created a crystal with the highest degree of what’s known as “double refraction” on Earth.
The Mork team was led by Ph.D. student and co-lead author Boyang Zhao, and Philip and Cayley MacDonald Endowed Early Career Chair Jayakanth Ravichandran.
The new material, called strontium titanium sulfide was grown by Zhao. It was found to have three times the birefringence of the team’s previous record-holding material, barium titanium sulfide.
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Ph.D. Student Boyang Zhao and Philip and Cayley MacDonald Endowed Early Career Chair Jayakanth Ravichandran.
The work was published September 20, 2023 by the journal Advanced Materials.
Read more about the research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s news site.
Ravichandran group’s work was supported by the Army Research Office and the National Science Foundation.
Published on September 29th, 2023
Last updated on October 3rd, 2023