Sinéad Griffin

Irish physicist

Sinéad Griffin

Born|  (1986-07-20) July 20, 1986 (age 38)

Dublin, Ireland

Nationality| Irish
Alma mater| University of California, Santa Barbara
ETH Zurich
Imperial College London
Trinity College, Dublin
Scientific career
Fields| Condensed matter theory
Materials Science
Institutions| Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Thesis| From the Early Universe to the Hubbard Hamiltonian in the Hexagonal Manganites
Doctoral advisor| Nicola Spaldin

Sinéad Majella Griffin (born July 20, 1986) is an Irish physicist working at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on condensed matter physics and materials science. She won the 2017 Swiss Physical Society Award in General Physics.

## Early life

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Griffin was born in 1986 in Rush, Dublin, Ireland.[1]

## Education

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Griffin studied physics at Trinity College, Dublin, graduating in 2008 with a bachelor's degree in theoretical physics.[2] She moved to Imperial College London for her master's studies, working with Ray Rivers on topological defects in condensed matter and cosmology.[3] She worked at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for her doctoral studies, studying superconductors and spintronics with Nicola Spaldin.[4] When Nicola Spaldin joined ETH Zurich, Griffin accompanied her, earning a PhD, in 2014 looking at the Hubbard model for hexagonal manganites.[5] During her PhD she tested the Kibble–Zurek mechanism in YMnO3.[6] She won the 2015 Materials and Processes (MaP) Award for the best interdisciplinary thesis at ETH Zurich.[7]

## Career

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In 2015 Griffin joined Jeffrey Neaton's laboratory at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.[8] She recognized that multiferroic hexagonal manganites exhibited the same symmetry as those proposed shortly after the Big Bang, testing phenomena that occur on galactic scales with those that occur in a laboratory.[6][9] Her work explored symmetry-breaking conditions that lead to topological defects.[10][11] Griffin has also worked on materials for high-energy physics experiments.[12][13]

In 2023, she won the Early Career Scientist Prize in Computational Physics from the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics.[14] In the same year, Griffin published an arXiv preprint, presenting density functional theory augmented with a on-site Hubbard-like model (i.e., DFT+U) calculations of Cu-substituted lead phosphate apatite (i.e., suspected structure of LK-99), identifying correlated isolated flat bands at the Fermi level, a debated[15] signature of superconductors. Per the author,[16] this work did not show that LK-99 is a superconductor at room temperature, but suggested the possibility of a room temperature superconductivity. Her findings propose a simplified two-band model for understanding this behavior in LK-99, and potentially other superconductors.[17] Similar theory preprints by other academics and researchers did not entirely agree with Griffin's results. [18][19]

## References

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1. ^ O'Connell, Claire (12 May 2022). "Creative collaboration leads to material connections". Irish Times. Retrieved 17 July 2023.
2. ^ "academic bio - sinead griffin | lbl/ucb". sites.google.com. Retrieved 12 May 2018.
3. ^ Sinead, Griffin; Ray, Rivers (November 2009). "Little and Large:Topological Defects in Cosmology and Condensed Matter Theory". APS California Section Meeting Abstracts: F4.002. Bibcode:2009APS..CAL.F4002G.
4. ^ Griffin, Sinéad M.; Spaldin, Nicola A. (16 April 2012). "Ab initio investigation of FeAs/GaAs heterostructures for potential spintronic and superconducting applications". Physical Review B. 85 (15): 155126. arXiv:1108.2963. Bibcode:2012PhRvB..85o5126G. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.85.155126. S2CID 119195578.
5. ^ Griffin, S. M; Lilienblum, M; Delaney, K; Kumagai, Y; Fiebig, M; Spaldin, N. A (2012). "From multiferroics to cosmology: Scaling behaviour and beyond in the hexagonal manganites". Physical Review X. 2 (4): 041022. arXiv:1204.3785. Bibcode:2012PhRvX...2d1022G. doi:10.1103/PhysRevX.2.041022.
6. ^ a b "HISKP: Multiferroics and the Early Universe". www1.hiskp.uni-bonn.de. Retrieved 12 May 2018.
7. ^ "MaP Award". www.map.ethz.ch. Retrieved 12 May 2018.
8. ^ "People - Neaton Group Neaton Group". commons.lbl.gov. Retrieved 12 May 2018.
9. ^ SPG-SPS-SSP. "Swiss Physical Society - SPS Awards 2017". www.sps.ch. Retrieved 12 May 2018.
10. ^ Griffin, Sinéad M.; Spaldin, Nicola A. (2017). "On the relationship between topological and geometric defects". Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter. 29 (34): 343001. arXiv:1703.05225. Bibcode:2017JPCM...29H3001G. doi:10.1088/1361-648X/aa7b5c. ISSN 0953-8984. PMID 28643697. S2CID 46778662.
11. ^ Griffin, Sinéad M.; Reidulff, Mari; Selbach, Sverre M.; Spaldin, Nicola A. (22 February 2017). "Defect Chemistry as a Crystal Structure Design Parameter: Intrinsic Point Defects and Ga Substitution in InMnO3". Chemistry of Materials. 29 (6): 2425–2434\. doi:10.1021/acs.chemmater.6b04207. hdl:11250/2467431. ISSN 0897-4756.2425-2434&rft.date=2017-02-22&rft_id=info:hdl/11250/2467431&rft.issn=0897-4756&rft_id=info:doi/10.1021/acs.chemmater.6b04207&rft.aulast=Griffin&rft.aufirst=Sinéad+M.&rft.au=Reidulff,+Mari&rft.au=Selbach,+Sverre+M.&rft.au=Spaldin,+Nicola+A.&rft_id=https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1pz6v3d2&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Sinéad+Griffin" class="Z3988">
12. ^ Hochberg, Yonit; Kahn, Yonatan; Lisanti, Mariangela; Zurek, Kathryn M.; Grushin, Adolfo G.; Ilan, Roni; Griffin, Sinéad M.; Liu, Zhen-Fei; Weber, Sophie F.; Neaton, Jeffrey B. (8 January 2018). "Detection of sub-MeV dark matter with three-dimensional Dirac materials". Physical Review D. 97 (1): 015004. arXiv:1708.08929. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.97.015004.
13. ^ Griffin, Sinéad M.; Hochberg, Yonit; Inzani, Katherine; Kurinsky, Noah; Lin, Tongyan; Yu, To Chin (6 April 2021). "Silicon carbide detectors for sub-GeV dark matter". Physical Review D. 103 (7): 075002. arXiv:2008.08560. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.103.075002.
14. ^ "IUPAP Early Career Scientist Prize in Computational Physics". The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. 16 March 2021. Retrieved 17 July 2023.
15. ^ Yang, Zoë S.; Ferrenti, Austin M.; Cava, Robert J. (1 April 2021). "Testing whether flat bands in the calculated electronic density of states are good predictors of superconducting materials". Journal of Physics and Chemistry of Solids. 151: 109912. doi:10.1016/j.jpcs.2020.109912. ISSN 0022-3697. S2CID 233072217.
16. ^ "LK-99 Is the Superconductor of the Summer". 3 August 2023. Retrieved 8 August 2023.
17. ^ Griffin, Sinéad M. (30 July 2023). "Origin of correlated isolated flat bands in copper-substituted lead phosphate apatite". arXiv:2307.16892 [cond-mat.supr-con].
18. ^ Panas, Itai (2023). "Entertaining the Possibility of RT Superconductivity in LK-99". arXiv:2308.06684 [cond-mat.supr-con].
19. ^ Cabezas-Escares, J.; Barrera, N. F.; Lavroff, R. H.; Cardenas, A. N. Alexandrova C.; Munoz, F. (2023). "Theoretical insight on the LK-99 material (Large update)". arXiv:2308.01135 [cond-mat.supr-con].

## External links

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* Sinéad Griffin on Twitter
* https://foundry.lbl.gov/about/staff/sinead-griffin/
* Personal Research Website
* Google Scholar Profile

Authority control databases

International|

* VIAF
* WorldCat

National|

* Germany

Academics|

* ORCID
* Mathematics Genealogy Project
* Scopus
* Google Scholar