Showing through January, 2017shiv_khanna_1

Shiv Khanna is a Commonwealth Professor of Physics at VCU and has received the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education, which is the highest honor bestowed by the Commonwealth. Arthur Reber is a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at VCU and is a postdoc in the Shiv Khanna Research Group.

The Shiv Khanna Research Group is internationally recognized for the theoretical study of atomic clusters, which are groups of bound atoms or molecules that contain up to a few dozen atoms.

One significant contribution involves the Khanna Group’s work with superatoms. Superatoms are group of atoms that mimic the chemical behavior of elements in the periodic table and thus extend the periodic table into a third dimension. The production and stabilization of such species is a stirring development as it opens a new branch of chemistry and material science, showing that these superatoms can be used as building blocks to form new nanoscale materials. These nanoscale materials could lead to new applications in electronics, magnetism, catalysis, sensors, medicine and other fields.

The images featured on Cabell’s Big Screen are 3D-modeled representations of superatoms and atomic clusters created in the open-source program Blender.

Learn more about the atomic clusters and superatoms in this exhibit from the research group’s gallery.

Recent publications:

Research Group Members:

Arthur Reber, Vikas Chauhan, Meichun Qian, Sanjubala Sahoo, Marissa Baddick, William Blades, Anthony Pedicini, Cameron Grover

Former Members:

Chris Ashman, Kristen Casalenuovo, Penee Clayborne, Doug Edmonds, Gabriel Ulises Gamboa, Fhokrul Islam, Naiche Jones, Baljeet Kaur, Feng Liu, Victor Medel, S. Vincent Ong, Selvarengan Paranthaman, Christopher Powell, J. Ulises Reveles, Debesh Ranjan Roy, Budda Reddy, Roberto Robles Rodriquez, Lin Zhu

Categories Faculty Work, Science, Student Work