Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

How can one quantify degrees of order between crystalline solids and their amorphous counterparts? Changes to structural periodicity can have a dramatic influence on a material's physical properties and reactivity, and it can offer valuable insights into material formation pathways in many geogenic and biogenic materials. Nevertheless, disorder in non-glassy solids is extremely understudied. If we can quantify order at different length scales, can the kind of disorder in a material tell us how it formed or evolved over time? Can we also use this knowledge to tailor material production toward a specified degree of disorder, thereby controlling physical properties? These knowledge gaps inspire my research program that seeks transformative links between the synthesis, structure and physical properties of disordered solid materials. Defining and quantifying disorder in solid materials has the potential to radically change how we think about the atomic-level world around us. My research program is highly original and innovative in the way it is designed to develop strategies for using common spectroscopic tools in new ways to address this understudied phenomenon. During the five-year term of this proposed research, my focused studies to extract crystallinity information from infrared spectra will have several ready audiences. Our recent breakthroughs with calcite infrared spectral analyses are followed closely by colleagues who study carbon sequestration in minerals. We will also use our results to develop spectroscopic diagnostic tools, based on structural disorder, that are leading to a paradigm shift for archaeological excavation strategies. Thus, the environmental and human-interest applications of this proposed research have timely impact and importance to a very broad community.