Call for Papers

Please contact the symposium organizers with questions.

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.

Topics will include:

• Creating functional defects in single crystals, nanostructures, two-dimensional layered structures, heterostructures, polycrystalline and substrate-support systems
• Progress of defect-enabled/enhanced electrochemical, photocatalysis, light-harvesting, ionotronic/neuromorphic computing, and smart sensing applications
• Methodological advances in theory, high-throughput computations and machine-learning/artificial intelligence for predictive modeling and design of functional defects
• Multi-scale methods to study the role of extended defects on the functionality of energy and electronic materials
• Visualizing creation and manipulation of defects dynamically in bulk, surface, interface and grain boundary of energy (e.g. batteries/fuel-cells/solar-cells/ultracapacitors) and electronic materials (e.g. ionotronic/neuromorphic materials, smart sensors)
• Relevance of defects in the operation of photovoltaics, ranging from purely inorganic to hybrid-materials, such as hybrid-perovskites, etc.

• A tutorial complementing this symposium is tentatively planned.

Invited Speakers (tentative):

• Eray Aidyl (New York University, USA)
• Joesph Berry (National Renewable Energy Laboratory, USA)
• Regina Ciancio (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche-Instituto Officina dei Materiali)
• Laura Herz (University of Oxford, United Kingdom)
• Gertjan Koster (Universiteit Twente)
• Huajun Liu (Agency for Science, Technology and Research, USA)
• Beatriz Noheda (University of Groningen, Netherlands)
• Wilfrid Prellier (École Nationale Supérieure d'Ingénieurs de Caen)
• Matthew Rosseinsky (University of Liverpool, United Kingdom)
• Andrej Singer (Cornell University, USA)
• Maria Varela (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
• Claire Xiong (Boise State University, USA)
• Nan Yang (ShanghaiTech University, China)

Symposium Organizers