Defects are ubiquitous in materials, and can alter its functionality – mechanical, chemical, electrical, optical, thermal etc. and their coupling with each other, in a profound manner. Not only are the ground-state properties modified, but also excited state properties, as well as the material responses to external fields, are significantly altered. Many compelling cases exist in energy and electronic materials where such profound role of defects manifest in a controlled manner. However, harnessing functional defects in energy and electronic materials presents outstanding scientific and technical challenges to researchers since effective and efficient theoretical and experimental tools permitting us to rationalize, predict, observe, visualize and control defect formation, migration and interactions are largely limited.

To address the pressing opportunities and difficulties, we envision this symposium to highlight most recent trends, applications and forefront challenges in developing and harnessing functional defects in a wide range of energy and electronic materials via bridging expertise on theoretical modeling/simulation, materials synthesis, functional measurement/control, and advanced characterization. Particular attention will be paid to predictive design of functional defects for energy and electronic applications via a combination of theory, high-throughput computations and machine-learning/artificial intelligence; synthesis of defect structures in functional nanostructures and epitaxial heterostructures; control of functional defect formation/migration/ordering; the interplay between defect responses in ionic lattices and their manipulation by external fields; and use of transformative imaging capabilities to probe defect-driven phenomena in-situ along with their dynamics, etc. The goal of this symposium is to provide an interactive forum for scientists from various fields who wish to develop and harness functional defects in energy and electronic materials towards emerging applications.

defects energy generation functional in situ ion-solid interactions operando perovskites scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) thin film