Sinéad Griffin Explained

Sinéad Griffin
Birth Date:20 July 1986
Birth Place:Dublin, Ireland
Workplaces:Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Nationality:Irish
Alma Mater:University of California, Santa Barbara
ETH Zurich
Imperial College London
Trinity College, Dublin
Thesis Title:From the Early Universe to the Hubbard Hamiltonian in the Hexagonal Manganites
Thesis Url:https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/handle/20.500.11850/88357
Doctoral Advisor:Nicola Spaldin
Fields:Condensed matter theory
Materials Science

Sinéad Majella Griffin (born July 20, 1986) is an Irish physicist working at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on condensed matter physics and materials science. She won the 2017 Swiss Physical Society Award in General Physics.

Early life

Griffin was born in 1986 in Rush, Dublin, Ireland.[1]

Education

Griffin studied physics at Trinity College, Dublin, graduating in 2008 with a bachelor's degree in theoretical physics.[2] She moved to Imperial College London for her master's studies, working with Ray Rivers on topological defects in condensed matter and cosmology.[3] She worked at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for her doctoral studies, studying superconductors and spintronics with Nicola Spaldin.[4] When Nicola Spaldin joined ETH Zurich, Griffin accompanied her, earning a PhD, in 2014 looking at the Hubbard model for hexagonal manganites.[5] During her PhD she tested the Kibble–Zurek mechanism in YMnO3.[6] She won the 2015 Materials and Processes (MaP) Award for the best interdisciplinary thesis at ETH Zurich.[7]

Career

In 2015 Griffin joined Jeffrey Neaton's laboratory at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.[8] She recognized that multiferroic hexagonal manganites exhibited the same symmetry as those proposed shortly after the Big Bang, testing phenomena that occur on galactic scales with those that occur in a laboratory.[9] Her work explored symmetry-breaking conditions that lead to topological defects.[10] [11] Griffin has also worked on materials for high-energy physics experiments.[12] [13]

In 2023, she won the Early Career Scientist Prize in Computational Physics from the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics.[14] In the same year, Griffin published an arXiv preprint, presenting density functional theory augmented with a on-site Hubbard-like model (i.e., DFT+U) calculations of Cu-substituted lead phosphate apatite (i.e., suspected structure of LK-99), identifying correlated isolated flat bands at the Fermi level, a debated[15] signature of superconductors. Per the author,[16] this work did not show that LK-99 is a superconductor at room temperature, but suggested the possibility of a room temperature superconductivity. Her findings propose a simplified two-band model for understanding this behavior in LK-99, and potentially other superconductors.[17] Similar theory preprints by other academics and researchers did not entirely agree with Griffin's results. [18] [19]

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Creative collaboration leads to material connections . Claire . O'Connell . . 2023-07-17 . 2022-05-12.
  2. Web site: academic bio - sinead griffin lbl/ucb. sites.google.com. 2018-05-12.
  3. Sinead. Griffin. Ray. Rivers. November 2009. Little and Large:Topological Defects in Cosmology and Condensed Matter Theory. APS California Section Meeting Abstracts. F4.002. 2009APS..CAL.F4002G. en.
  4. Griffin. Sinéad M.. Spaldin. Nicola A.. 2012-04-16. Ab initio investigation of FeAs/GaAs heterostructures for potential spintronic and superconducting applications. Physical Review B. 85. 15. 155126. 10.1103/PhysRevB.85.155126. 1108.2963. 2012PhRvB..85o5126G. 119195578 .
  5. 1204.3785. Griffin. S. M. From multiferroics to cosmology: Scaling behaviour and beyond in the hexagonal manganites. Physical Review X. 2. 4. Lilienblum. M. Delaney. K. Kumagai. Y. Fiebig. M. Spaldin. N. A. 2012. 041022 . 10.1103/PhysRevX.2.041022. 2012PhRvX...2d1022G.
  6. Web site: HISKP: Multiferroics and the Early Universe. www1.hiskp.uni-bonn.de. en. 2018-05-12.
  7. Web site: MaP Award. www.map.ethz.ch. en. 2018-05-12.
  8. Web site: People - Neaton Group Neaton Group. commons.lbl.gov. 2018-05-12.
  9. Web site: SPG-SPS-SSP . Swiss Physical Society - SPS Awards 2017 . 2018-05-12 . www.sps.ch . en.
  10. Griffin. Sinéad M.. Spaldin. Nicola A.. Nicola Spaldin. 2017. On the relationship between topological and geometric defects. Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter. en. 29. 34. 343001. 10.1088/1361-648X/aa7b5c. 28643697. 0953-8984. 1703.05225. 2017JPCM...29H3001G. 46778662 .
  11. Griffin. Sinéad M.. Reidulff. Mari. Selbach. Sverre M.. Spaldin. Nicola A.. 2017-02-22. Defect Chemistry as a Crystal Structure Design Parameter: Intrinsic Point Defects and Ga Substitution in InMnO3. Chemistry of Materials. EN. 29. 6. 2425–2434. 10.1021/acs.chemmater.6b04207. 0897-4756. 11250/2467431. free.
  12. Hochberg . Yonit . Kahn . Yonatan . Lisanti . Mariangela . Zurek . Kathryn M. . Grushin . Adolfo G. . Ilan . Roni . Griffin . Sinéad M. . Liu . Zhen-Fei . Weber . Sophie F. . Neaton . Jeffrey B. . 2018-01-08 . Detection of sub-MeV dark matter with three-dimensional Dirac materials . Physical Review D . 97 . 1 . 015004 . 10.1103/PhysRevD.97.015004. 1708.08929 .
  13. Griffin . Sinéad M. . Hochberg . Yonit . Inzani . Katherine . Kurinsky . Noah . Lin . Tongyan . Yu . To Chin . 2021-04-06 . Silicon carbide detectors for sub-GeV dark matter . Physical Review D . 103 . 7 . 075002 . 10.1103/PhysRevD.103.075002. 2008.08560 .
  14. Web site: IUPAP Early Career Scientist Prize in Computational Physics . The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics . 16 March 2021 . 2023-07-17.
  15. Yang . Zoë S. . Ferrenti . Austin M. . Cava . Robert J. . 2021-04-01 . Testing whether flat bands in the calculated electronic density of states are good predictors of superconducting materials . Journal of Physics and Chemistry of Solids . 151 . 109912 . 10.1016/j.jpcs.2020.109912 . 233072217 . 0022-3697. free .
  16. News: 2023-08-03 . LK-99 Is the Superconductor of the Summer . en . 2023-08-08.
  17. Origin of correlated isolated flat bands in copper-substituted lead phosphate apatite. 2023-07-30. Griffin. Sinéad M.. cond-mat.supr-con . 2307.16892.
  18. Panas . Itai . 2023 . Entertaining the Possibility of RT Superconductivity in LK-99 . cond-mat.supr-con . 2308.06684.
  19. Cabezas-Escares . J. . Barrera . N. F. . Lavroff . R. H. . Cardenas . A. N. Alexandrova C. . Munoz . F. . 2023 . Theoretical insight on the LK-99 material (Large update) . cond-mat.supr-con . 2308.01135.

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