Professor

Takahiro Yamada

Assistant Professor

Akira Hosono

Exploration of novel inorganic functional materials, and development of new synthetic processes

Most inorganic materials are metals, alloys, and oxides, and inorganic compounds such as nitrides and intermetallic compounds also have high potential as functional materials. There are many inorganic compounds which have not been found or whose functions have not been fully revealed and understood. We aim to develop novel materials focusing on thermoelectric materials, hard ceramics and metals, and superconductors by exploratory research of novel inorganic compounds, and preparation of high-quality samples by new synthetic processes, and characterization of their functionality and demonstration of the mechanism through appropriate experiments and theoretical calculations. These fundamental researches have the possibility to find out game changers in material science. That is, many intriguing compounds are await to be discovered and uncovered!

Themes

• Development of thermoelectric materials based on multinary intermetallic compounds
• Development and application of synthetic processes of nitrides using solid nitrogen sources
• Synthesis and characterization of novel Zintl compounds for functional materials
• Material design based on computational materials science
• Study of theoretical phase diagram based on statistical thermodynamic calculations