Shpyrko Research Group @ UCSD

Welcome to the Shpyrko Research Group at UCSD!

Shpyrko group, May 2016

We are an experimental condensed matter physics group in the Department of Physics at the University of California, San Diego. Our group studies nanoscale structural dynamics - splitting our interest between hard and soft condensed matter systems.

We are particularly interested in developing novel coherent x-ray scattering techniques to probe dynamics in a variety of condensed matter systems, ranging from electronic and magnetic phases (charge-, spin-, orbital ordered systems, magnetic thin films and nanostructures, metal-insulator transitions and new high-temperature superconductors) to soft matter including fluids, colloids, nanoparticles, polymers and glasses as well as behavior of materials in nanoscale confinement.

Our in-house experimental capabilities include Dynamic Light Scattering and Light Microscopy laboratories, Atomic Force (AFM) and Electrostatic Force (EFM) Miroscopes, Microfocus X-ray Rotating Anode system, He flow cryostat for microscopy, Sputtering Deposition System (co-owned with Prof. Eric Fullerton).

Our main research, however, makes use of a number of National Laboratory User Facilities, including the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne, PETRA III in Germany, the Linac Coherent Light Source at Stanford, SACLA and SPring-8 in Japan, the National Synchrotron Light Source-II at Brookhaven, the Advanced Light Source at Berkeley, and other facilities in the US and Europe.

Our group's research is generously supported by the following funding agencies: Department of Energy (Basic Energy Sciences), National Science Foundation (CAREER), Air Fource Office of Scientific Research, Argonne LDRD and Hellman Foundation.

News Updates:

Our paper on dislocation dynamics within lithium-rich battery cathodes is published in Nature Energy (July 2018)
Devin Cela receives the Carol and George Lattimer Award of Graduate Excellence (April 2018)
Andrej Singer becomes an Assistant Professor at Cornell University in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (July 2017)
Josh Ruby receives the the Physical Sciences Dean's Undergraduate Award for Excellence (November 2017)
Roopali Kukreja becomes an Assistant Professor at UC Davis in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (July 2016)
Our paper on imaging of the photonic crystals within butterfly wings is published in Science Adv. (June 2016)
Our paper on atomic avalanche imaging of hydrogen storage palladium nanoparticles is published in Nature Communications (Dec. 2015)
Our paper on High Harmonics generated X-rays for Magnetic Imaging is published in PNAS (Oct. 2015)
Dr. Roopali Kukreja wins 2015 Klein Award! (Sept. 2015)
Operando Batery Imaging work is published in Science (Jun 2015)
Andrew Ulvestad gets Inamori Award (Mar 2015)
Leandra Boucheron wins Best Poster Award at 2014 APS Users Meeting (May 2014)
Dr. Andrej Singer wins the Award of the Association of the Friends and Sponsors of DESY for best PhD Thesis!
We made Anisotropic Liquids!, see recent PRL (Nov. 2012)
Gurleen gets Dean's Excellence and Taylor awards! (Apr 2012)

Future is bright: These new research directions are especially exciting in view of recent developments in coherent fourth generation synchrotron sources, such as X-ray Free Electron Lasers and Energy Recovery Linacs.

Selected Publications:

"Orbital Domain Dynamics in Magnetite below the Verwey Transition" Roopali Kukreja, Nelson Hua, Joshua Ruby, Andi Barbour, Wen Hu, Claudio Mazzoli, Stuart Wilkins, Eric E. Fullerton, and Oleg G. Shpyrko, Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 177601 (2018)

"Nucleation of dislocations and their dynamics in layered oxide cathode materials during battery charging" A. Singer, M. Zhang, S. Hy, D. Cela, C. Fang, T. A. Wynn, B. Qiu, Y. Xia, Z. Liu, A. Ulvestad, N. Hua, J. Wingert, H. Liu, M. Sprung, A. V. Zozulya, E. Maxey, R. Harder, Y. S. Meng & O. G. Shpyrko, Nature Energy 3, 641–647 (2018)

"Nonequilibrium Phase Precursors during a Photoexcited Insulator-to-Metal Transition in V2O3" Andrej Singer, Juan Gabriel Ramirez, Ilya Valmianski, Devin Cela, Nelson Hua, Roopali Kukreja, James Wingert, Olesya Kovalchuk, James M. Glownia, Marcin Sikorski, Matthieu Chollet, Martin Holt, Ivan K. Schuller, and Oleg G. Shpyrko. Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 207601 (2018)

"Domain morphology, boundaries, and topological defects in biophotonic gyroid nanostructures of butterfly wing scales" Andrej Singer, Leandra Boucheron, Sebastian H. Dietze, Katharine E. Jensen, David Vine, Ian McNulty, Eric R. Dufresne, Richard O. Prum, Simon G. J. Mochrie and Oleg G. Shpyrko, Science Advances 2 (6), 1600149 (2016)

"Topological defect dynamics in operando battery nanoparticles" A. Ulvestad, A. Singer, J. N. Clark, H. M. Cho, J. W. Kim, R. Harder, J. Maser, Y. S. Meng,and O. G. Shpyrko, Science 348 (6241), 1344-1347 (2015)

You are welcome to read more about our research directions and facilities we use, browse our publication list, check out our research in the news, and you can contact us here.

X-ray Speckle reveals nanoscale spin dynamics