Discovery and Exploration of Quantum Nitrides

We propose to discover and develop a fundamentally new class of quantum materials, complex quantum nitrides. Electronically complex, i.e., magnetic, correlated, topological, nitride materials –– particularly nitrogen-rich exemplars –– are theorized to host numerous quantum states and phase behaviors widely sought in condensed matter and materials physics. The covalency associated with the polarizable nitrogen anion creates interaction spaces where strong superexchange, enhanced hopping, and new structure types hold the promise of stabilizing new types of quantum magnets, correlated topological states, and new frontiers in unconventional superconductivity. Furthermore, by developing and then perturbing high temperature, strongly coupled magnetic phases in quantum nitrides, energetic fluctuations are predicted to arise and create emergent states that manifest higher in temperature and in more technologically relevant regimes than the current state-of-the-art. To create new quantum nitrides, synthetic challenges must first be overcome. Our team has recently developed unique instrumentation capable of accessing the ultrahigh temperature and ultrahigh pressure processing regime required to create single crystals of quantum nitrides and explore this frontier. Guided by our team’s theoretical modeling of nitride stability and electronic properties with a wide variety of physical models and cutting-edge computational tools ranging from DFT, dynamical mean field theory and machine learning, we will employ advanced synthetic and materials characterization techniques to demonstrate that quantum nitrides host unique electronic states and can serve as higher energy scale platforms of emergent phase behavior relative to their oxide cousins. The project focuses on exploring new classes of low dimensional magnetic quantum nitrides, and the outcome will be a demonstration of quantum nitrides as an exciting, unexplored frontier for quantum materials and the natural successor to the widely studied complex oxides.