Emergent Properties from Correlated Disorder

Our modern world depends on the advanced functional materials which make up our phones, windmills, MRI-scanners and many more advanced technologies. Most of these materials are thought of as being built by ordered patterns of atoms. In reality, many such materials have a degree of disorder to their structures on the atomic scale, which influence their properties. This disorder is often assumed to be random, but there are now strong indications that most often this is not the case as the atoms follow local rules and are strongly correlated. By better understanding the link between disorder and properties it will be possible to engineer new materials with the properties needed for better future technologies.

A combination of both experiment and simulation will be used. Using recently developed techniques, the local rules of disorder can be measured and analysed by scattering x-rays, neutrons and electrons from the studied materials. Computer simulation will be used to predict the behaviour and properties for different types of correlated disorder, and different experimental techniques will then be used to measure the behaviour of electrons, collective atomic vibrations and ion transport to validate the simulations.