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Pierre T. Darancet

Scientist, Nanoscience

Theory of charge, heat, and energy transport in nanoscale materials and assemblies.

Biography

Pierre Darancet is a scientist at the Center for Nanoscale Materials who studies the optical, electronic, and thermal properties of quantum materials, nanomaterials, and interfaces. His research focuses on developing atomistically- and quantum-mechanically-informed theories of macroscopic optoelectronic properties of complex materials, as well as on developing efficient computational approaches to simulate experimental probes (time-resolved spectroscopy, transport, and scanning probe measurements). He is a fellow at the Northwestern Argonne Institute for Science and Engineering.

Education and Professional Preparation

Awards

Research Topics

  • First-principles modeling of charge, heat, and energy transport in nanoscale materials and heterogeneous interfaces.
  • Optoelectronic, optomechanical, and electro-thermal properties of materials
  • Method development in quantum and semi-classical  dynamics 
  • Inverse Design and AI-guided experimentation

Current/previous projects

  • Center for Nanoscale Materials, Theory and Modeling group (2014-present): Code development, electronic structure and transport simulations of nano and energy materials, support of external users as part of the DOE NSRC program
  • Department of Energy, Office of Science Threadwork: A Transformative Co-Design Approach to Materials and Computer Architecture Research” (2021-present): Development of a co-design framework for simulation of plasmonic interconnects. 
  • National Science Foundation: Northwestern University MRSEC, IRG1 Reconfigurability in Mixed-Dimensional Heterojunctions” (2015 - present): Atomistic simulations of mixed-dimensional heterojunctions (MDHJ). Development of density functionals for MDHJ and extractions of materials descriptors for highly heterogeneous materials.  
  • Department of Energy, Scientific User Facilities A Digital Twin for In Silico Time- Resolved Experiments” (2021-present)
  • Department of Energy, Scientific User Facilities The Atomic Quantum Information Surface Science (AQuISS) Lab” (2021-present)
  • Argonne LDRD program: 
    • Managing Emission and Thermal Absorption”  2016-2018: Development of a coupled Boltzmann transport equation framework for simulations of time-dependent phonon bottlenecks. 
    • AI Robotic Platform for Solution-Processable Materials” 2019: Development of the polybot robotic platform for autonomous synthesis and processing of solution-processable materials. 
    • Atomic Synthesis of Artificial Lattices for Quantum Simulation”  2019-2021: Development of a high throughput simulation framework for artificial lattice modeling, including tight-binding topological invariants, Muffin-tin models of molecular absorption, density functional simulations, and inverse design modules.   
    • AI guided metastable phase diagram of materials”  2019-2021: Development of an high throughput framework for the identification of metastable phases and the construction of metastable phase diagrams of materials.  
    • AI Robotics for Solution-Processable Materials” 2020: Development of the polybot software environment for autonomous synthesis and processing of solution-processable materials. 
    • Exploring metastable metal-nanocarbon composites for enhanced electrical and thermal conductivity” 2021
    • Transport modeling of C-in-Cu/Al nanoscale inclusions”  2021
    • Inverse Microstructure Design for Enhanced Thermal and Electrical Conductivity”

 

Research News and Highlights

Publications

Google Scholar page

Codes

Data

Current group members

  • Qunfei Zhou, Postdoctoral Fellow, Northwestern University and Argonne National Laboratory Linkedin,Scholar Page
  • Jack Crewse, Postdoctoral Fellow, Argonne National Laboratory Linkedin, Scholar Page
  • Anubhab Haldar, Graduate Student, Boston University Linkedin, Scholar Page, co-supervised with Prof. Sahar Sharifzadeh

Past group members and visitors

  • Dr. Sridhar Sadasivam (Postdoctoral fellow, Argonne National Laboratory), June 2016 – January 2018 Linkedin, Scholar Page. Position prior to joining the group: Graduate student, Purdue University. Position upon leaving the group: Staff Scientist position at Intel.
  • Dr. Srilok Srinivasan (Postdoctoral fellow, Argonne National Laboratory, co-supervised by Dr. Subramanian Sankaranarayanan), January 2019 – April 2021 Linkedin, Scholar Page. Position prior to joining the group: Graduate student, Iowa State University. Position upon leaving the group: Machine Learning Scientist at Peptilogics.
  • Dr. Henry Chan (Postdoctoral fellow, Argonne National Laboratory, supervised by Dr. Subramanian Sankaranarayanan), February 2019 – September 2020 Linkedin, Scholar Page.Position prior to joining the group: Postdoctoral fellow, University of Illinois at Chicago. Position upon leaving the group: Assistant Scientist, Argonne National Laboratory.
  • Mr. Kevin Ryczko (Visiting Graduate Student), May – August 2018, supervised by Dr. Isaac Tamblyn Linkedin, Scholar Page. Position prior to joining/upon leaving the group: Graduate student, Department of Physics, University of Ottawa.
  • Mr. Nicholas Rivera (Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship Practicum), June – August 2018 Linkedin, Scholar Page. Position prior to joining/upon leaving the group: Graduate student, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 
  • Mr. Praveen Balaji (Student Research Participation Program, Argonne National Laboratory), June – August 2018 Linkedin. Position prior to joining/upon leaving the group: Undergraduate student, Department of Physics and Department of Computer Science, University of Chicago.
  • Mr. Trevor Steiner (Research Experience for Undergraduates, Northwestern University MRSEC, co-supervised by Dr. Qunfei Zhou), June – August 2018 LinkedinScholar Page.Position prior to joining/upon leaving the group: Undergraduate student, Department of Materials Science University of Minnesota. 
  • Mr. Daniel Palmer (DOE SULI Program, Argonne National Laboratory), May – July 2020, Research Aide August 2020 – July 2021 Linkedin.; Position prior to joining the group: Undergraduate student, Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame. Position upon leaving the group: Graduate student, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
  • Mr. Bukuru Anaclet (Research Experience for Undergraduates, Northwestern University MRSEC, co-supervised by Dr. Qunfei Zhou), June – August 2020, REU+ fellow, Northwestern University, September 2020 – March 2021 Linkedin, Scholar Page.; Position prior to joining/upon leaving the group: Undergraduate student, Department of Chemistry, Pomona College.
  • Prof. Salvador Barraza-Lopez (Sabbatical stay from University of Arkansas), May – September 2018 homepage, Scholar Page.;