HIU Seminar | Prof. Andrea Gauzzi
Prof. Andrea Gauzzi from the Physics Department, Sorbonne University, Paris, France and Department of Quantum Materials, Max-Planck Institut für Solid State Research, Stuttgart, Germany will be guest during the upcoming HIU Seminar taking place on Tuesday, 16th June 2026 at 4:00 pm: The talk will be held in person in the large seminar room (230) at the HIU and streamed under the usual Zoom link: The title of the talk will be "Engineering Stable Aqueous Zn Metal Anodes: From Deposition Behavior to Interfacial Chemistry”.
Abstract
A wealth of novel metastable phases can be stabilised under high pressure and subsequently recovered and studied at ambient conditions. These high-pressure phases typically display structural and electronic properties that radically differ from those of ambient phases [1,2]. Notably, high pressure favours higher coordination numbers of a given coordination complex and higher valence states of transition metals.
In this talk, I show that these peculiar properties can be exploited to hinder lattice distortions and thus to disentangle electronic and lattice degrees of freedom. As illustration of this possibility, I consider the example of quadruple perovskites [3], where the disentanglement gives rise to remarkable phenomena, such as a purely electronic Mott metal-insulator transition [4], or to enhanced performances of a variety of functional materials ranging from magnetic ferroelectrics [5] to electrocatalysts [6]. Finally, I shall discuss some ideas for the generalisation of these results to strained thin films and bulk materials.