Carrier Recombination at Sandia National Labs
While at Sandia National Laboratories, a Federally Funded Research and Development Corporation (FFRDC) under the U.S. Department of Energy, I investigated temperature-dependence carrier recombination in semiconductor materials as a member of the computational materials team (Dept. 1800). I am grateful for the supervision of Dr. Normand Modine during this project.
- While at Sandia, I developed a first-principles approach for point defect modeling under [seminal theories of electron and hole capture](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.35.1525), allowing for [improvements on Density Functional Theory (DFT) simulations](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010465521001685) of transition probabilities.
- I developed a transition-state model for the relaxation process involved in electron and hole capture, and discussed the effects of anharmonicity and multidimensionality in the governing potentials when informing transition rate calculations.
- I also interacted with several R&D projects beyond the carrier recombination framework, including in broader, lab-wide materials and chemistry frameworks – whether experimental or computational. In this process, I engaged with techniques such as Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD), sputtering, broader experimental defect modeling work, high-entropy alloys, single photon sources, and magnetic hysteresis.
A preprint of my work at Sandia will be made available soon.