The development of materials with innovative properties has become an increasingly pressing need in recent decades. In particular, the need to obtain combinations of functional properties inaccessible to conventional materials has led to the study of increasingly complex inorganic materials from both the compositional and microstructural points of view. The research group’s activity has been focused for some time on the development of innovative synthesis techniques and structural characterization of these classes of materials. Research has recently focused on so-called high entropy materials. These materials offer the possibility of introducing cations whose presence is energetically disadvantaged within relatively simple crystalline structures, exploiting a high entropic term generated by a high configurational disorder. Some of these materials exhibit particularly relevant magnetic, dielectric, or transport properties. The study of the phase equilibria and of the functional properties of these materials, which usually include between 5 and 10 different cations, is however made extremely complex by a large number of compositional degrees of freedom. Their rational study requires the development of new investigation paradigms that differ significantly from those traditionally used in materials science. To this purpose, the group makes intensive use of synchrotron radiation to exploit advanced structural characterization tools based on diffraction and spectroscopic methods.
Related publications:
Coduri, M., Fracchia, M., Guerrini, M., Dejoie, C., Ghigna, P. and Tamburini, U.A., Novel In-based high entropy spinel oxides with tunable lattice parameter. Journal of the European Ceramic Society (2022)
Fracchia, M., Coduri, M., Manzoli, M., Ghigna, P. and Tamburini, U.A., Is configurational entropy the main stabilizing term in rock-salt Mg0. 2Co0. 2Ni0. 2Cu0. 2Zn0. 2O high entropy oxide?. Nature Communications, 13(1), p.2977 (2022)
Fracchia, M., Callegari, D., Coduri, M., Anselmi-Tamburini, U., Manzoli, M., Quartarone, E. and Ghigna, P., Electrochemical performance of high and medium entropy oxides for lithium batteries. Frontiers in Energy Research, 10, pp.1-9 (2022)
Fracchia, M., Manzoli, M., Anselmi-Tamburini, U. and Ghigna, P., A new eight-cation inverse high entropy spinel with large configurational entropy in both tetrahedral and octahedral sites: Synthesis and cation distribution by X-ray absorption spectroscopy. Scripta Materialia, 188, pp.26-31, (2020)
Fracchia, M., Ghigna, P., Pozzi, T., Anselmi Tamburini, U., Colombo, V., Braglia, L. and Torelli, P., Stabilization by configurational entropy of the Cu (II) active site during CO oxidation on Mg0. 2Co0. 2Ni0. 2Cu0. 2Zn0. 2O. The journal of physical chemistry letters, 11(9), pp.3589-3593, (2020).