Last updated: Jun./03/2011.

Masato Yoshiya's Research Group

(Quantum Materials Physics Lab.)

Division of Materials and Manufacturing Science, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, Japan.

Materials Science and Engineering Course, Division of Materials and Manufacturing Science, School of Engineering, Osaka University, Japan.

INTRODUCTION

"Raison d'etre" of a material is to be used in the real world to function by itself or in combination with other materials as a component, a device, a module, or whatsoever in the product that contributes to our society. To function, a material needs to possess a property or more that distinguishes the material from others, which makes the condensed matter turn into the material. In order to create and desing materials properties, deep understanding about materials themselves is required.

Our group projects are targeted at acquiring fundamental understanding as to

why a material possesses specific characteristics,
what are origins of materials properties,
what electronic, atomistic, and/or micro structures are required,
how we can help materials to exhibit their properties, and
how we control materials properties by changing various levels of structure,

in order to improve potential characteristics of materials or create new characteristics, such that those materials are to function in real-world application, thereby providing new seeds of applicational use of materials.

Different from other fields in science and technology, in materials science and engineering, a computational method is not mere a replacement of experiment, but, in combination with experimental methods, a powerful tool that helps us

to analyse experimental result in more detail,
to understand what really happended in experiment which might not be observable in experiment,
to predict a new phenomena that can be thereafter confirmed in experiment,
to propose a new experiment through virtual experiment in ideal environment that is not necessary to be realistic at this stage, and,
to design and create a new material.

These can be carried out by sub-nano, nano, or micron level computational analysis and prediction methods, including

First-principles (or Ab-Initio) method for electronic structure including band structure, chemical bonding, and elastic properties,
Lattice Statics for optimizing local atomic coordination including determining grain boundary or surface structure,
Lattice Dynamics for frozen phonon states,
Molecular Dynamics for various dynamic properties including phase transition, ionic conduction, and heat conduction,
Phase Field Modeling for microstructure evolution based on thermodynamics,
Cellular Automaton method and/or stocastic method including Monte Carlo method for crystal growth, and,
Finite Difference Method for transport phenomena in continuum matter,

depenging on what needs to be studied.

Many of our projects are done in conjunction with Hideyuki Yasuda's Research Group (Materials Processing and Devices Creation Laboratory), thanks to the diffuse border and very low barrier among laboratories in our department.