Research

Minerals often form at different pressure, temperature, and chemical potential conditions from those at which they are found and processed. 

• Which are stable? 

• Which will transform?

• What will they transform to?

• How long will it take?

• How much energy is required?

We explore two major themes

1. Mineral synthesis

   • goal: understand mineral formation mechanisms

   • application: predictive chemical prospecting

2. Minerals for synthesis

   • goal: predict transformation pathways from minerals to functional materials

   • application: separations-by-synthesis

Organisms utilize minerals as nutrients to fabricate bones, teeth, shells, sensors, and storage capsules. They use active transport, spending energy to separate valuable elements from waste. We emulate this natural strategy to actively separate critical elements using three distinct approaches

1. Brine mining

   • goal: selective separation of critical elements from brine resources 

   • approach: opto-electrochemistry

2. Predictive demixing

   • goal: controlling liquid-liquid and liquid-solid separation far from equilibrium

   • approach: autonomous reactors with realtime feedback

3. Active control

   • goal: use charge, magnetism, light, electricity, and gravity to both sense and control separation processes

   • approach: hypermodal measurements with integrated AI decision making

One defining characteristic of life is the control over shape evolution, such as the growth of an embryo. Morphogenesis during the transformation of minerals can also be controlled to produce functional materials with properties that far exceed otherwise similar materials that aren't intelligently guided. We explore the dynamics of structure during transformations

1. Frozen reactions

   • goal: observe atomic arrangement of reactions in progress

   • approach: AI-accelerated algorithm development for phase contrast cryo electron tomography

2. Reaction dynamics

   • goal: observe the dynamics of far-from-equilibrium processes over a range of length and time scales

   • approach: apply x-ray and optical photon correlation spectroscopy to observe processes over 9 orders of magnitude in length and time

Complex matter cannot be described exactly by quantum theory because the relevant length and time scales are too large for the limited energy available to computers. An empirical approach, which nonetheless relies on the quantum interaction between electrons that gives rise to chemistry, may address the need for fast, complex chemical computation