Musfeldt Elected as NHMFL User Committee Chair

September 28, 2010 by newframe

Dr. Janice Musfeldt, Professor of Chemistry, was elected Chair of the Users Committee of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, effective January 2011.

Established by the National Science Foundation Cooperative Agreement, the NHMFL’s Users Committee represents the laboratory’s broad multidisciplinary user community and advises the lab’s leadership on all issues affecting users of the facilities.

Musfeldt joined the faculty in 2001. Since then, she has made many contributions to the field of spectroscopy of materials under extreme conditions. She is particularly well known for forwarding high magnetic field spectroscopies of complex solids, although she is also interested in low temperature, high pressure, small size, and frustration effects in functional materials. Her scientific work is extensively cited, and she is in great demand as an invited speaker. Musfeldt serves the materials community via extensive conference, school, and workshop organization.

Graduate Student Peng Chen’s Paper Accepted in Nano Letters

September 27, 2010 by newframe

Peng (Jacky) Chen, a graduate student in Dr. Janice Musfeldt’s research group has one paper accepted in Nano Letters, an ACS publication reporting on fundamental research in all branches of the theory and practice of nanoscience and nanotechnology.

Chen, cooperating with Xiaoshan Xu, Dr. Musfeldt from the University of Tennessee and Christopher Koenigsmann, Alexander Santulli and Stanislaus Wong from the State University of New York, in their paper “combined infrared spectroscopy with group theory and lattice dynamics calculations to reveal the displacive nature of the ferroelectric transition in BiFeO₃, a room temperature multiferroic” ( abstract from the authors).

The findings, in Chen’s words, could demonstrate “the foundational importance of size effects to elucidate ferroelectric transition mechanisms”, and also illustrate “the far-reaching potential of finite size effects for band gap modification of functional oxides that may have applications in flexible ferroelectric photovoltaic devices and oxide-based electronics”.

Out of 59 journals in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Nano Letters is No. 3 in ISI Impact Factor: 9.991, based on the 2009 Journal Citation Reports^® by Thomson Reuters; and No. 2 in citations, with 46,238 total cites.

Chen is very excited about publishing in Nano Letters as a second year graduate student. He also thanked his advisor Dr. Musfeldt for this acheivement. “I cannot achieve it without the guidance of my advisor Dr. Janice  Musfeldt and cooperating with the collaborators. But I know there is a long way to go in the scientific career and I am ready for the challenges.” Chen said.

Chen was born in Hubei, China. He received his B.S. in Chemistry in 2002 and M.S. in Software Engineering in 2005 from University of Science & Technology of China (USTC). After four years of working in the Keenmicro Financial System Inc., Chen joined the research group of Dr. Janice L. Musfeldt in the spring 2009 pursuing his Ph.D. degree in the University of Tennessee. His current research focuses on the study of optical properties of novel transition metal oxides.