Department of Materials Science and Engineering

 Darrell Schlom makes sandwiches just a few atoms thick to feed science and technology's appetite for new materials.

Like most materials scientists, he used to take an experimental approach to cooking up new recipes. He'd combine a little of this with a little of that and then taste. But now Schlom makes sandwiches to order for Craig Fennie, another new Cornell Engineering faculty member. Fennie uses first-principles quantum mechanics to predict the properties of new materials before they've even been created. "I'm elated that Craig's here. He provides guidance," says Schlom. "I used to go on fishing expeditions. Now I have a map," he adds, laughing.

The ingredients in Schlom's sandwiches are complex oxides, the properties of which vary tremendously depending on the charge, spin, and orbital ordering of electrons, as well as crystal structure. "Craig has these wacky ideas like 'Arrange these atoms in this particular new way that they don't normally arrange in,'" says Schlom. "And he has crazy predictions that go along with this, like 'If you can do this, it should be simultaneously ferroelectric and ferromagnetic.' You hear the prediction, and you go, 'How could it possibly be true?'"

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