BIOGRAPHY

Sergei V. Kalinin is currently a senior research staff member at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and co-theme leader for scanning probe microscopy at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at ORNL, following an Eugene P. Wigner fellow appointment at ORNL (2002–2004). He received his PhD degree in materials science at the University of Pennsylvania in 2002. He is also adjunct faculty at Pennsylvania State University and professor at the Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Education at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

His research is focused on local bias-induced phase transitions and polarization dynamics in ferroelectric, multiferroic, and macromolecular systems. In the last several years, he explores local electrochemical and ionic phenomena in solids including battery and fuel cell materials and memristive electronics, with the ultimate purpose of probing electrochemical transformations in solids on a nanometer level of a single-defect level, and atomically-resolved studies of electrochemical and ferroic behaviors on oxide surfaces. The key element of his work is scanning probe microscopy (SPM) of electromechanical and transport phenomena, with specific emphasis of multidimensional and artificial-intelligence–assisted SPM methods. Several of his developments has been adopted and licensed by the SPM industry.

During his academic career, he has been the recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2010, Burton Medal of American Microscopy Society (2010), IEEE-TUFFC Young Investigator Award (2010), the Robert L. Coble (2009) and Ross Coffin Purdy (2003) Awards of American Ceramics Society, AVS Peter Mark Memorial Award (2008), MRS graduate student gold award (2001), and 2 R&D100 awards (2010 and 2008). He organized 4 MRS symposia on SPM and nanoscale electromechanics, and served as volume (2012) and issue organizer of MRS Bulletin. He is the author of more than 200 scientific publications and 14 patents and disclosures on different aspects of SPM and ferroelectric materials applications. He has also organized a series of international workshops on piezoresponse force microscopy and SPM for energy storage materials.

ABSTRACT

ELECTROCHEMISTRY ON NANO- AND ATOMIC LEVELS: SCANNING PROBE MICROSCOPY MEETS DEEP DATA

Structural and electronic properties of oxide surfaces control their physical functionalities and electrocatalytic activity, and are currently of interest for energy generation and storage applications. In this presentation, I will discuss several examples of high-resolution studies of the electronic and electrochemical properties of oxide surfaces enabled by multidimensional scanning probe microscopies. On the mesoscopic scale, combination of strain- and current sensitive scanning probe microscopies allows to build nanometer-scale maps of local reversible and irreversible electrochemical activities. The use of multivariate statistical methods allows separating the complex multidimensional data sets into statistically significant components which in certain cases can be mapped onto individual physical mechanisms. I will further discuss the use of in-situ Pulsed Laser Deposition growth combined with atomic resolution Scanning Tunneling Microscopy and Spectroscopy to explore surface structures and electrochemical reactivity of oxides on the atomic scale. For SrRuO3, we directly observe multiple surface reconstructions and link these to the metal-insulator transitions as ascertained by UPS methods. On LaxCa1-xMnO3, we demonstrate strong termination dependence of electronic properties and presence of disordered oxygen ad-atoms. The growth dynamics and surface terminations of these films are discussed, along with single-atom electrochemistry experiments performed by STM. Finally, I explore the opportunities for atomically-resolved imaging and property data mining of functional oxides extending beyond classical order parameter descriptions.

This research is supported by the by the U.S. Department of Energy, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division, and was conducted at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, which is sponsored at Oak Ridge National Laboratory by the Scientific User Facilities Division, BES DOE.