Chemistry and Physics of Functional Materials Laboratory

This laboratory was established in 2013 focusing on development of energy-oriented novel functional materials based on inorganic materials science, physical and solid state chemistry, and condensed matter physics. It also aims at more comprehensive targets in materials science by combining a wide variety of the properties of inorganic materials and an extensive tunability of organic molecules. The most distinguished achievement of our lab is a pioneering work on oxide and sulfide thermoelectric materials resulting in our continuing accomplishments on the best performances of both n- and p-type bulk thermoelectric oxides. Our perspective, however, is not limited to the thermoelectric materials, but extends to unconventional approaches in materials chemistry and physics for next-generation materials including low-dimensional quantum-confined inorganic nanomaterials spontaneously formed in the presence of self-assembly molecular templates exploiting organic surfactant molecules.