Charles Bessey Professor of Physics,
Nebraska Center for Materials and Nanoscience

Peter A. Dowben

310L Jorgensen Hall
402-472-9838
402-472-6148 (fax)
pdowben@unl.edu


Publication Record

Author of more than 640 articles in refereed journals and books, 37 invited review articles, 30 invited presentations at national and international conferences, and 30 patents. Some papers may be found on the digital commons: Digital Commons Page


Other Links

Surface Science:
www.lasurface.com/accueil/index.php

Biographical Summary


2002 - present: Charles Bessey Professor, University of Nebraska
1995 - present: Professor of Physics and Graduate Fellow, University of Nebraska
1994 - present: Research Professor of Chemistry, University of Nebraska
1993 - 1995: Associate Prof. of Physics and Graduate Fellow, University of Nebraska
1990 - 1993: Associate Prof. of Physics, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York
1987 - 1996: Adjunct Prof. of Chemistry, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York
1986 - 1993: Member of Solid State Science and Technology Program, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York
1984 - 1990: Assistant Prof. of Physics, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York
1981 - 1983: Scientist with the Fritz-Haber Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, FRG
1981 - Visiting Scientist to the Department of Physics, University Osnabrueck, FRG
1980 - 1981: Research Assistant to Dr. M. Grunze, Fritz-Haber Institut der Max-Planck Gesellschaft, and the Free University, Berlin, FRG
1981 - Ph.D. in Physics, University of Cambridge

Interests and Capabilities


The major focus of the Dowben group emphasizes the changes in electronic (band) structure across electronic phase transitions in reduced dimensionality. Of interest are ferromagnetism in local moment systems or spatially restricted systems, ferroelectricity, multiferroic behavior and the nonmetal to metal transition.

Specific techniques include angle-resolved photoemission, resonant photoemission, inverse photoemission and spin polarized inverse photoemission. Other techniques include spin polarized photoemission, characteristic energy loss, low energy electron diffraction, angle resolved thermal desorption spectroscopy, X-ray photoemission, and magneto-optic Kerr effect.

Research Projects


  1. Organic and organometallic materials in ultrahigh vacuum molecular multiferroics
  2. Orientation, bonding and electronic structure of organic overlayers, organometallic molecular overlayers and molecular magnets.
  3. The temperature dependent electronic structure of ferroelectric crystalline molecular films, as a function of metallicity.
  4. The spin polarized occupied and unoccupied band structure of local moment ferromagnetic systems as a function of temperature.

Funded by the NSF, NSF Polarization and Spin Phenomena MRSEC (DMR-1420645), through the Semiconductor Research Corporation, the SRC-nCORE initiative.

Research


Group Personnel Collaborators at UNL
Takashi Komesu
Archit Dhingra
Thilini Ekanayaka
Esha Mishra
Arjun Subedi
Kirill Belashchenko (Physics)
Christian Binek (Physics)
Alexei Gruverman (Physics)
Xia Hong (Physics)
Rebecca Lai (Chemistry)
Wai-Ning Mei (Physics)
Alexander Sinitskii (Chemistry)
Robert Streubel (Physics)
Evgeny Tsymbal (Physics)
Xiaoshan Xu (Physics)

Recent Results and Key References


Electrostatic Dipolar Coupling on the Local Scale:

Aaron Mosey, Ashley S. Dale, Guanhua Hao, Alpha N'Diaye, Peter A. Dowben, Ruihua Cheng, "Quantitative Study of Energy Change in Voltage-controlled Spin Crossover Molecules for Molecular Spintronics", J. Physical Chemistry Letters 11 (2020) 8231-8237

Guanhua Hao, Aaron Mosey, Xuanyuan Jiang, Andrew J. Yost, Keshab R. Sapkota, George T. Wang, Xin Zhang, Jian Zhang, Alpha T. N'Diaye, Ruihua Cheng, Xiaoshan Xu, Peter A. Dowben, "Nonvolatile Voltage Controlled Molecular Spin State Switching", Appl. Phys. Lett. 114 (2019) 032901; doi: 10.1063/1.5054909

Xin Zhang, Alpha T. N'Diaye, Xuanyuan Jiang, Xiaozhe Zhang, Yuewei Yin, Xuegang Chen, Xia Hong, Xiaoshan Xu, Peter A. Dowben, "Indications of magnetic coupling effects in spin cross-over molecular thin films", Chem. Commun. 54 (2018) 944-947.

Xin Zhang, Paulo S. Costa, James Hooper, Daniel P. Miller, Alpha T. N'Diaye, Sumit Beniwal, Xuanyuan Jiang, Yuewei Yin, Patrick Rosa, Lucie Routaboul, Mathieu Gonidec, Lorenzo Poggini, Pierre Braunstein, Bernard Doudin, Xiaoshan Xu, Axel Enders, Eva Zurek, Peter A. Dowben, "Locking and Unlocking the Molecular Spin Cross-Over Transition", Advanced Materials 32 (2017) 1702257.

Recent General Papers on Surface & Interface Magnetism:

Ather Mahmood, Will Echtenkamp, Mike Street, Jun-Lei Wang, Shi Cao, Takashi Komesu, Peter A. Dowben, Pratyush Buragohain, Haidong Lu, Alexei Gruverman, Arun Parthasaraty, Shaloo Rakheja, Christian Binek, "Voltage controlled Neel vector rotation in zero magnetic field at CMOS-compatible temperatures". Nature Communications 12 (2021) 1674

Peter A. Dowben, Christian Binek, Kai Zhang, Lu Wang, Wai-Ning Mei, Jonathan P. Bird, Uttam Singisetti, Xia Hong, Kang L. Wang, Dmitri Nikonov, "Towards a Strong Spin-Orbit Coupling Magnetoelectric Transistor", IEEE Journal of Exploratory Solid-State Computational Devices and Circuits (2018) 1-9; Online ISSN: 2329-9231; doi: 10.1109/JXCDC.2018.2809640

Graduate Students (and Current Affiliations)


NameDegree DateCurrent Affiliation
Daniel C. Driscoll Ph.D. 1987 Naval Surface Warfare Center, Virginia
Hans-Jorg Ruppender Dipl. Chem. 1987 CEO Omnivac, Kaiserslautern, FRG
Greg T. Stauf Ph.D. 1988 IP Value, Branchburg, NJ
Sangramitra Baral M. Sc. 1990 NRL
Shikha Varma Ph.D. 1990 Professor of Physics, Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar, India
David LaGraffe Ph.D. 1990 Director, Office of Poliferation Detection, NA-22, National Nuclear Security Administration
Yolanda Kime Ph.D. 1991 S.U.N.Y-Cortland, Professor Emeritus, Software Developer, Chicago
John Mazurowski M.Sc. 1992 Senior Engineer, Pennsylvania State Univ. Electro-Optic Cntr.
Yoon-Gi Kim Ph.D. 1992 Samsung Electronics, South Korea
Sunwoo Lee Ph.D. 1992 Patent Law, Polsinelli PC, Washington D.C.
Dongqi Li Ph.D. 1993 On disability leave
Jiandi Zhang Ph.D. 1994 Professor of Physics, Louisiana State University
NSF Highlight
Dongjin Byun Ph.D. 1995 Professor, Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering, Korea University
Seong-Don Hwang Ph.D. 1996 Patent Lawyer, Seoul, Korea
John Kushneir III M.Sc. 1996 Leybold-Inficon, East Syracuse
Tara Jean McAvoy M.Sc. 1997 Process Engineer with Raytheon, California
Dulip Welipitiya Ph.D. 1997 Headway Technologies, Milpitas, CA
Carlo Waldfried Ph.D. 1998 Director of Innovation, Entegris
Jaewu Choi Ph.D. 1998 Professor, Dept. of Information Display, Kyung Hee University, Korea
Delia Ristoiu Ph.D. 2000 ST - Microelectronics, Grenoble, France
Hanni Dulli Ph.D. 2000 Instructor, Dept. of Physics, Texas Tech University
Camelia Borca Ph.D. 2001 Staff, Paul Scherrer Institute
Laeticia Bernard Diplom Physiker 2002 Staff, Glas Trosch AG
Rui-Hua Cheng Ph.D. 2002 Associate Professor, Indiana University - Purdue - Indianapolis
Takashi Komesu Ph.D. 2002 Research Associate Professor, UNL
Bo Xu Ph.D. 2002 Professor of Physics, Yanshan University
Hae-Kyung Jeong Ph.D. 2003 Professor, Daegu University
Anthony Caruso Ph.D. 2004 Professor and Assistant Vice Chancellor of Research, Univ. of Missouri - Kansas City
Luis Rosa Ph.D. 2005 Professor of Physics, University of Puerto Rico - Humacao
Snow Balaz M.Sc. 2005
(Ph.D. in Engineering with J. Brand, 2007)
Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, Youngstown State University
Danqin Feng Ph.D. 2007 Lumentum, Santa Barbara, California
Carolina Ilie Ph.D. 2008 Professor of Physics, S.U.N.Y. - Oswego
David Wisbey Ph.D. 2008 Assistant Professor of Physics, St. Louis University, St. Louis, MO
Jie Xiao Ph.D. 2009 Staff, BESSY II, Berlin
Ning Wu Ph.D. 2009 Engineer, Cognito Systems
David Wooten Ph.D. 2010 Staff, STRATCOM
Jing Liu Ph.D. 2011 Assistant Professor of Physics, Manhattan College
Zheng Zheng Zhang Ph.D. 2011 Staff, American Institute of Physics
Juan Colón Santana Ph.D. 2012 Assistant Professor, Aurora University
Keisuke Fukutani Ph.D. 2012 Assistant Professor, Institute for Molecular Science Japan
Lingmei Kong Ph.D. 2012 Analyst, National Futures Association
Xin Zhang Ph.D. 2016 Staff, X-ray Optical Systems
Elena Echeverria Ph.D. 2017 Staff, Oklahoma State University
Iori Tanabe Ph.D. 2017 Staff, National Instruments
Shi Cao Ph.D. 2017 Staff, VISA Corp.
Paulo Costa Ph.D. 2018 Data Scientist, First Republic Bank
Prescott Evans Ph.D. 2020 Post-Doc, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Simeon Gilbert Ph.D. 2021 Post-Doc, Sandia National Laboratory
Guanhua Hao Ph.D. 2021 Post-Doc, Berkeley National Laboratory

Post-docs (and Current Affiliations)


NameDate(s) Worked For DowbenCurrent Affiliation
David McIlroy 1993-1996 Professor of Physics and Department Head, Oklahoma State University
Jiandi Zhang 1994-1995 Professor of Physics, Louisiana State University
NSF Highlight
Zhenchen Zhong 1997-1999 Professor, Materials Science, Nanchang Hong Kong University
Jaewu Choi 1998-2001 Professor, Dept. of Information Display, Kyung Hee University, Korea
Hae-Kyung Jeong 2003-2004 Professor, Daegu University
Takashi Komesu 2007, 2013-Present University of Nebraska
Ihor Ketsman 2006 - 2011 passed away 2013
Jie Xiao 2009 - 2010 Staff, BESSY II, Berlin
Ning Wu 2009 - 2012 Engineer, Cognito Systems
Dong Jik Kim 2014 University of Seoul, Korea
Aiyun Liu 2015-2016 Shanghia Normal University
Andrew Yost 2017-2019 Assistant Professor of Physics, Oklahoma State University