University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-5121
dshoe
mrl.ucsb.edu
PhD Candidate (2010)
Advisor: Ram Seshadri
B.S. 2006: University of Illinois MatSE
I am currently enjoying life as a graduate student in Materials at UCSB. My advisor is Prof. Ram Seshadri, and I focus on structure-property relations of inorganic materials. I received my B.S. with Honors in Materials Science and Engineering from Illinois, and conducted research with Prof. David Payne. I am originally (and somewhat proudly) from Spartanburg, South Carolina. Feel free to read a bit about my research interests or contact me using the information above. I'm looking forward to frequently updating this page as my research progresses. Outside of work, I am a fan of skiing, barbecue, hiking, virtually all movies and music, volleyball, sweet tea, wearing flip flops year-round, and okra (fried or pickled).
I am investigating materials that are disordered on the nanoscale. That includes many possible forms of heterogeneity: inclusions, precipitates, incoherent distortions, etc. More specifically, I pursue rapid, template-free processes which spontaneously convert single-phase ceramic monoliths into two-phase composites. We can impart functionality to these composites by choosing phases which exhibit complex behavior, either intrinsic or at interfaces. My goal is to describe structure-property-processing relationships in these functional materials using a variety of scattering and microscopy techniques, alongside magnetic and electrical measurements. I benefit from excellent facilities at the UCSB MRL (SQUID, PPMS, LCR, DSC, HTXRD, TEM, XPS, TGA, SEM, etc.) and collaboration with the Lujan Neutron Scattering Center at LANSCE (NPDF, HIPD).
A large part of my research concerns real-space modeling of disordered materials. Analysis of total scattering (Bragg and diffuse) yields the pair distribution function, which is basically a weighted histogram of all atom-atom distances in a material. Very surprising information can be obtained by fitting the real-space structure via least-squares or reverse Monte Carlo refinements. At the heart of this work is the assertion that, on the atomic scale, materials do not look or act like we often assume when using bulk structural probes.
- S. A. Corr, D. P. Shoemaker, E. S. Toberer, and R. Seshadri. Spontaneously formed porous and composite materials. J. Mater. Chem. (in press) [Feature]
D. P. Shoemaker, I. Sabaj Abumohor, E. E. Rodriguez, Th. Proffen, and R. Seshadri. Intrinsic exchange bias in ZnxMn3-xO4 (x ≤ 1) solid solutions. Phys. Rev. B 80 144422 (2009) [doi] - D. P. Shoemaker, J. Li, and R. Seshadri. Unraveling atomic positions in an oxide spinel with two Jahn-Teller ions: Local structure investigation of CuMn2O4. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 131 [32] 11450 (2009) [doi]
- D. P. Shoemaker, S. A. Corr, and R. Seshadri. Porosity through reduction in metal oxides. Mater. Res. Soc. Symp. Proc. 1148E PP10-01 (2009) [doi]
- D. P. Shoemaker, M. Grossman, and R. Seshadri. Exchange biasing of single-domain Ni nanoparticles spontaneously grown in an antiferromagnetic MnO matrix. J. Phys. Cond. Mat. 20 195219 (2008) [doi]
