Topics of research
Inorganic Solid State Chemistry | Thermoelectric materials | Nonlinear optical materials.
(High temperature) synthesis, structure determination, transport properties, magnetic and thermochemical properties (equipment) | Band structures (DFT) | Machine learning (ML) | Correlations between crystal structure, electronic structure, and physical properties. Unusual Sb–Sb, Se–Se and Te–Te bonding, square net distortions, structure maps
Brief summary of our research
One of our newest projects is to utilize Cu ion mobility to lower the thermal conductivity. This mobility has to be localized within each unit cell in order to inhibit Cu ion migration throughout the material, which would otherwise cause device degradation. Since the thermoelectric properties depend on the thermopower as well as on the electrical and thermal conductivity, various property measurements are routinely carried out in our group. The syntheses are guided by calculations including machine learning performed by students who are fascinated by the theoretical aspects of chemical research.
Selected publications
- N. K. Barua, A. Golabek, A. O. Oliynyk, H. Kleinke, Experimentally Validated Machine Learning Predictions of Ultralow Thermal Conductivity for SnSe Materials, J. Mater. Chem. C 11, 11643 - 11652 (2023).
- L. T. Menezes, E. Gage, A. Assoud, M. Liang, P. S. Halasyamani, H. Kleinke, Sr6Ge3OSe11: A Rationally Designed Noncentrosymmetric Oxyselenide with Polar [GeOSe3] Building Blocks, Chem. Mater. 35, 3033 - 3040 (2023).
- C. Gayner, L. T. Menezes, Y. Natanzon, Y. Kauffmann, H. Kleinke, Y. Amouyal, Development of Nanostructured Bi2Te3 with High Thermoelectric Performance by Scalable Synthesis and Microstructure Manipulations, ACS Appl. Mater. Interf. 15, 13012 - 13024 (2023).
- Y.-C. Tseng, S. S. Razavi-Tousi, D. Ramirez, H. Kleinke, Advancing the Reliability of Thermoelectric Materials: a Case Study of Silicides through Statistics, Appl. Phys. Lett. 119, 193903/1 - 6 (2021).
- D. C. Ramirez, L. R. Macario, X. Cheng, M. Cino, D. Walsh, Y.-C. Tseng, H. Kleinke, Large Scale Solid State Synthetic Technique for High Performance Thermoelectric Materials: Magnesium-Silicide-Stannide, ACS Appl. Energy Mater. 3, 2130 - 2136 (2020).
Prof. Dr. Holger Kleinke
Department of Chemistry
Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
Phone +1 (519) 888-4567 ext. 33577
Email: kleinke@uwaterloo.ca