Congratulations to Victoria Kortan for successfully defending her PhD dissertation on "Transition-Metal Dopants in Tetrahedrally Bonded Semiconductors: Symmetry and Exchange Interactions from Tight-Binding Models."

"Victoria studied the properties of dopants with magnetic character in semiconductors. These dopants, which are commonly individual atoms or small clusters of atoms, have long-lasting magnetic properties due to the nonmagnetic character of the surrounding host semiconductor. Victoria calculated the electronic wave functions around those dopants, for comparison with measurements via scanning tunneling microscopy. She identified the consequences of weak and strong hybridization due to lattice symmetry on certain wave functions around iron dopants, explaining why one type was very localized and the other was very extended. She also predicted the strength of the exchange interaction between nitrogen-vacancy spin centers in diamond crystals."
— Michael Flatté, PhD advisor

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