Dr. Canepa's scientific artwork selected for PRB frontpage

Dr. Canepa's scientific artwork has been selected for the Phys. Rev. B. frontpage, http://prb.aps.org. For the month of March 2013, his artwork will be part of a kaleidoscope, presenting this month's most interesting journal images at http://prb.aps.org/kaleidoscope.

The artwork shows a frontal view of the metal organic framework MOF-74. In this project, we investigate the existence of linear magnetism in MOF-74-Fe, MOF-74-Co, and MOF-74-Ni, using first-principles density functional theory. MOF-74 displays regular quasilinear chains of open-shell transition-metal atoms, as depicted in the figure, which are well separated. Our results show that, within these chains, ferromagnetic coupling of significant strength occurs. The significance of our finding is that MOF-74 is very easy to synthesize and we have thus likely found the simplest realization of the 1D Ising model in nature! This work was published in Phys. Rev. B 87, 094407 (2013). Dr. Canepa is conducting research in the Department of Physics in Dr. Thonhauser's Materials Simulation Group.