Graduate and Postdoc Fellow Seminar: Steven Gomez Alvarado

3D-ΔPDF analysis of short-range charge order in LnCd3P3 (Ln = La, Ce, Pr, Nd)

Steven received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from UCLA in 2018. Prior to arriving at UCSB, he spent several years investigating novel thermoelectric materials at NASA’s Jet
Propulsion Laboratory. He now works under Prof. Stephen Wilson investigating strongly correlated materials by developing advanced bulk single crystal growth techniques and by using X-ray and neutron scattering methods to investigate their ground states and excitations. In this talk, Steven will detail a ΔPDF study of diffuse X-ray scattering observed in the LnCd3P3 family of compounds, unveiling a frustrated, short-range charge order in insulating samples that may arise from a second-order Jahn-Teller instability.