Sean Sullivan received his BS and MS in Materials Science and Engineering from Purdue University in 2012 and 2013, respectively. Working with the Li Shi group at UT Austin, he received his PhD in MSE in 2018 where he studied nonequilibrium thermal, thermoelectric, and spin transport in 2D materials and semiconductors. After a postdoc at UT Austin, he joined the Quantum Materials group at Argonne National Laboratory in the fall of 2019. 

Sean’s current research is principally focused on spin-photon interfaces in three areas: the application-driven discovery of novel defect-host material systems for quantum technologies, room temperature intrinsic defects in silicon carbide, and the integration of magnon-based control of spins in optically-active quantum hybrid systems. 

Selected Publications

• Chen, X., Kim, J., Jia, Q., Sullivan, S. E., Xu, Y., Jarvis, K., Zhou, J., & Shi, L. (2020). Synthesis and Magnon Thermal Transport Properties of Spin Ladder Sr₁₄Cu₂₄O₄₁ Microstructures. Advanced Functional Materials, 2001637.
• Chen, X., Carrete, J., Sullivan, S., van Roekeghem, A., Li, Z., Li, X., Zhou, J., Mingo, N., & Shi, L. (2019). Coupling of Spinons with Defects and Phonons in the Spin Chain Compound Ca₂CuO₃. Physical Review Letters, 122(18), 185901.
• Tian, F., Song, B., Chen, X., Ravichandran, N. K., Lv, Y., Chen, K., Sullivan, S., Kim, J., Zhou, Y., Liu, T.-H., Goni, M., Ding, Z., Sun, J., Gamage, G. A. G. U., Sun, H., Ziyaee, H., Huyan, S., Deng, L., Zhou, J., … Ren, Z. (2018). Unusual high thermal conductivity in boron arsenide bulk crystals. Science, 361, 6402.
• Sullivan, S., Vallabhaneni, A., Kholmanov, I., Ruan, X., Murthy, J., & Shi, L. (2017). Optical Generation and Detection of Local Nonequilibrium Phonons in Suspended Graphene. Nano Letters, 17(3), 2049–2056. 
• Man, H., Shi, Z., Xu, G., Xu, Y., Chen, X., Sullivan, S., Zhou, J., Xia, K., Shi, J., & Dai, P. (2017). Direct observation of magnon-phonon coupling in yttrium iron garnet. Physical Review B, 96, 100406.
• An, K., Olsson, K. S., Weathers, A., Sullivan, S., Chen, X., Li, X., Marshall, L. G., Ma, X., Klimovich, N., Zhou, J., Shi, L., & Li, X. (2016). Magnons and Phonons Optically Driven out of Local Equilibrium in a Magnetic Insulator. Physical Review Letters, 117(10), 107202.
• Chen, X., Bansal, D., Sullivan, S., Abernathy, D. L., Aczel, A. A., Zhou, J., Delaire, O., & Shi, L. (2016). Weak coupling of pseudoacoustic phonons and magnon dynamics in the incommensurate spin-ladder compound  Sr₁₄Cu₂₄O₄₁. Physical Review B, 94(13), 134309.