Chamorro Awarded Kaufman Grant
Heidi Opdyke
- Associate Dean of Marketing and Communications, MCS
- Email opdyke@andrew.cmu.edu
- Phone 412-268-9982
Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) Assistant Professor Juan Chamorro has been named as a recipient of a New Investigator Research Grant from the Charles Kaufman Foundation. The awards are designated to provide support for early career faculty who are conducting innovative, fundamental scientific research at institutions located in Pennsylvania.
Chamorro, who joined Carnegie Mellon’s MSE department in 2024 and has a courtesy appointment in the Department of Physics, will use the funding to study how frustrated electron interactions can create new quantum states by using pyrochlores, complex materials that can exhibit a variety of desirable magnetic and electrical properties. Due to the pyrochlore crystal structure, which possesses a network of corner-sharing tetrahedra, interactions between electrons become frustrated due to geometry, and can consequently exhibit magnetic spin and orbital movement that remains in constant motion even at near absolute zero temperatures.
Through this research, Chamorro aims to determine if the spin and orbital behaviors in specific transition-metal based pyrochlores could lead to a “quantum spin-orbital liquid,” in which the electrons’ frustrated interactions result in a state that resists freezing or magnetic order, potentially unlocking new physics and quantum device possibilities.
“The impact of this work has potential for us to better understand quantum matter, specifically in cases where not only the spin components of electrons are frustrated, but their orbital configurations as well. Since orbitals tend to interact at higher energy scales compared to just spins, a spin–orbital liquid may allow us to unlock quantum phenomena and applications under more friendly, less extremely-cryogenic conditions,” Chamorro said.
The discovery of spin-orbital liquids could lead to stronger quantum computing and communication and help design advanced materials.
