Sergei V. Kalinin


Sergei V. Kalinin is a distinguished research staff member at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He is also a Joint Associate Professor at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.

Education

Kalinin graduated with M.S. from Department of Materials Science, Moscow State University, Russia in 1998. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2002.

Career

He has been a research staff member at ORNL since October 2004. Previously he was Theme leader for Electronic and Ionic Functionality at CNMS, ORNL.
He was a recipient of Eugene P. Wigner Fellowship.
He became Joint faculty at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education, University of Tennessee, Knoxville in December 2010. He also became adjunct professor at Sung Kyun Kwan University in January 2013.

Research: Big Data in physics and Atom by atom fabrication

Kalinin research focusses on the applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques for the analysis of nanometer scale and atomically resolved imaging data, with the central concept being the extraction of physics of atomic, molecular, and mesoscale interactions from imaging data and enabling the real-time feedbacks for controlled matter modification, patterning, and atom by atom fabrication.
This research emerges at the junction between three concepts. The first is that the development of modern electron and scanning probe microscopies have opened the flood=gates of high-veracity information on structure and functionalities of solids, which is rarely stored or analyzed. Within IFIM, Kalinin has led the development of the operational frameworks including
full information capture from imaging tools such as SPM and STEM,
implementation of HPC based crowd-sourced analysis and physics extraction tools, and
implementation of common knowledge spaces.
Secondly, the complex atomic and mesoscale dynamics are typically underpinned by relatively simple low dimensional mechanisms, whether constitutive relations for mesoscale systems or force-fields in atomistic systems. Consequently, extraction of these simple physical parameters form imaging data can revolutionize modern science. He worked on combination of physics-based and data-centric analysis tools for analysis of structural and hyperspectral functional images, including development of the linear and non-linear un-mixing methods that satisfy a priori physical constraints, inversion of dynamic imaging data and Bayesian inversion methods for spectral data. Recently, his group starts to delve into application of deep learning networks combined with physical constraints imposed via training sets or via network architecture. The underlying philosophy of this research is to use the known physical constraints and models to establish causative relationships between materials properties and functionalities, and further develop this towards processing, getting beyond the purely correlative paradigm of big data approaches.
Finally, both electron and scanning probe microscopies can affect the materials, most notable example of these effects being electron beam damage in solids. Kalinin and his colleagues further believe that at this point electron microscopy is positioned to transition from purely imaging tool enabling physics to a new paradigm of atomic matter control and quantum computing, enabled via recently demonstrated atom by atom fabrication by electron beams.
The research effort at the IFIM is described at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hwZTUvFzko
Kalinin has proposed the concept of Atomic Forge, the use of the sub-atomically focused beam of Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy for atomic manipulation and atom by atom assembly, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZMhRPAJRsw

Research: Nanoelectromechanics and Piezoresponse Force Microscopy

Prior to this effort, Kalinin has developed the field of nanoscale electromechanics, exploring the coupling between electrical and mechanical phenomena on the nanoscale. This coupling is extremely common in nature, with piezoelectricity, electrostriction being examples of simple electromechanical behaviors, whereas hearing and mobility being example of complex ones. In fact, modern physics have arguably started from experiments of Luigi Galvani who detected mechanical response of frog leg to electrical bias. However, electromechanical couplings are remarkably weak even on the nanoscale. Furthermore, often of interest are electromechanical responses on the level of individual ferroelectric domains in ceramics, collagen fibrils in bones, etc. The invention of Piezoresponse Force Microscopy by Kolosov and Gruverman has provided the first tool for probing electromechanical phenomena on the nanoscale. Kalinin's contributions to PFM include the first PFM imaging in liquid and vacuum, the first PFM of biological tissues, the first demonstration and probing of controllable one-dimensional topological defects, and the first observation of nanoscale ferroelectricity in molecular systems. He also pioneered the development of spectroscopic imaging modes that allowed him to visualize polarization switching on the sub-10 nanometer level, solving the 50-year-old Landauer paradox, and discovered the origins of size effect for Rayleigh nonlinearity in thin films.
He and his collaborators developed the fundamental theory for contrast formation in PFM and established resolution and contrast transfer mechanisms of domain walls and spectroscopy. In collaboration with Long Qing Chen group, he has pioneered the combination between PFM and phase field modeling, enabling real space deterministic studies of polarization switching on a single defect level. Much of this work was performed in tandem with the development of instrumental methods for ferroelectric characterization. Sergei led the team that pioneered the revolutionary BE principle1 for force-based scanning probe microscopes. This transition from single frequency to parallel multifrequency detection enables the quantitative capture of probe-material interactions Building upon this concept, the multidimensional, multimodal spectroscopies developed by Sergei and his team to probe bias and time dynamics in these materials have enabled quantitative studies of polarization dynamics and mechanical effects accompanying switching in ferroelectrics.
This work has further demonstrated the critical role of electrochemical phenomena on ferroelectric surfaces that led to discovery of new forms of polarization switching. Kalinin's work has revealed the role of the ionic screening on ferroelectric surface, via series of experiments including demonstration of potential retention above Curie temperature, potential inversion, and formation of domain wall shadows during wall dynamics. He has further shown the emergence of chaos and intermittency during domain switching and domain shape symmetry breaking. Most recently, his group has introduced the chemistry-based boundary conditions for phase-field models of ferroelectrics and developed the basic theory and phase-field formulation for domain evolution. He and his collaborators have shown that ferroelectric state is fundamentally inseparable from electrochemical state of the surface, leading to emergence of coupled electrochemical-ferroelectric states, explored their thermodynamics and thickness evolution of this state, and demonstrate the experimental pathway to establish its presence based on spectroscopic version of piezoresponse force microscopy.
The talk on 30 years of Scanning Probe Microscopy is available at: https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/8013/229945/celebrating-30-years-of-afm-and-stm

Awards and honors

He is a recipient of:
Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2009,
Blavatnik Award Laureate and Finalist,
IEEE-UFFC Ferroelectrics Young Investigator Award in 2010,
Burton medal of Microscopy Society of America in 2010,
ISIF Young Investigator Award in 2009,
American Vacuum Society 2008 Peter Mark Memorial Award,
2003 Ross Coffin Award and 2009 Robert L. Coble Awards of American Ceramics Society,
RMS medal for Scanning Probe Microscopy ;
Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers ;
IEEE-UFFC Ferroelectrics Young Investigator Award ;
4 R&D100 Awards
He was named a fellow of Materials Research Society, Foresight Institute, MRS, AVS, APS, and a senior member and Fellow of IEEE.
He is a member of editorial boards for Nanotechnology, Journal of Applied Physics/Applied Physics Letters, and Nature Partner Journal Computational Materials.

Contributions

The detailed description of PFM principles and applications is available in a series of tutorial lectures based on the materials presented during PFM workshop series :
Lecture 1: Introduction into PFM and nanoelectromechanics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsyRW2_Kp-Y&t=150s
Lecture 2: Contact mechanics and resolution in PFM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDmXUt4OOuY&t=4s
Lecture 3: Dynamics in PFM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKx1wSs4uXM
Lecture 4: PFM of ferroelectric materials
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYeZQ8d3Mjk
Lecture 5: Switching spectroscopy PFM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53pqhCLURJg
Lecture 6: Advanced spectroscopic modes in PFM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2yUhJoIKko
Lecture 7: PFM in liquids
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZI73NJCmrM
Lectures of Scanning Probe Microscopy for electronic and ionic transport measurements
Lecture 1: Transport measurements by Scanning Probe Microscopy
https://youtube.com/watch?v=PjjjXij7930
Lecture 2: Introduction to Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy
https://youtube.com/watch?v=WB0s9cwIuxM
Lecture 3: Dynamic Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy
https://youtube.com/watch?v=NgQd-i77Plg
Lecture 4: Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy of Lateral Devices
https://youtube.com/watch?v=-7vlVrzGTeA
Lecture 5: Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy in Liquids
https://youtube.com/watch?v=yE6eMhSmhPQ
Lecture 6: Current-voltage Measurements in Scanning Probe Microscopy
https://youtube.com/watch?v=HzXO0vbWy7E
Lecture 7: Dynamic IV measurements in SPM
https://youtube.com/watch?v=vFgL097xTKI

Favorite books

1. M. Nielsen, Reinventing Discovery
2. J. Gertner, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American innovation
3. M.A. Hilzik, Dealers of the lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age
4. C.C.M. Mody, Instrumental Community: Probe Microscopy and the Path to Nanotechnology
5. J.D. Martin, Solid State Insurrections
6. C.C.M. Mody, The Long Arm of Moore's law: Microelectronics and American Science
7. T.J. Sejnowski, The Deep Learning Revolution
8. J. Soni and R. Goodman, A Mind at Play: how Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age
9. T.R. Reid, The Chip
10. D. Kushner, Masters of Doom
11. S. Patterson, The Quants
12. V. Mayer-Schonberger, Big Data
13. T. Hey, The Fourth Paradigm
14. M. Belfiore, The Department of Mad Scientists
15. A. Finkbeiner, The Jasons
16. Assorted LitPRG, SciFi, and alternative history