Sean Sorto

Major: Physics
Mentors: Reina Gomez, Professor Stephen Wilson

Exploration and Synthesis of Rare Earth Nitrides HoN and Hexagonal BN

Nitrides remain to be an underexplored class of materials that may exhibit a variety of interesting magnetic and electronic phenomena. As a result of the thermodynamic difficulty when synthesizing nitride materials, the current state of research done on h-BN and rare-earth nitrides in particular has primarily been done at small scales involving characterization of powders or thin films. With the enhanced power, optics, and operating capabilities of various high pressure laser-based furnaces, the phase space of materials has increased and the synthesis of bulk, high purity, HoN and h-BN single crystals has become an attainable research endeavor. Characterization techniques such as X-ray diffraction and SQUID magnetometry have been implemented to verify the phase purity and to probe the magnetic properties of the grown materials.