Catalogo dei Corsi di studio

HOMEPAGE: http://www2.phys.uniroma1.it/doc/mauri/

DATE OF BIRTH

January 14, 1967

EMPLOYMENT SUMMARY

Nov. 2015 - ..., Professore Ordinario, Università di Roma la Sapienza
Oct. 2015 - ..., Fellow of the American Physical Society
Jul. 2012 - Oct. 2015, Directeur de recherche at the CNRS
Sep. 2001 - ..., Member of the Institut Universitaire de France"
Sep. 1998 - Jun. 2012, Professeur d'Universitè, Universitè Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris
Jan. 1997 - Aug. 1998, Maître assistant, IRRMA, Universitè de Geneva
Nov. 1994 - Dec. 1996, Miller Research Fellow, University of California at Berkeley

EDUCATION

Oct. 1990 - Oct. 1994, Doctoral studies: Universitè de Geneva and SISSA Trieste
Oct. 1985 - Jul. 1990, Undergraduate studies: Università di Pisa and Scuola Normale Superiore

PUBLICATIONS

270 publications on ISI web of science that include:

41 Phys. Rev. Lett.
103 Phys. Rev. B.
3 Nature
1 Science
2 Nature Materials
3 Nature Physics
4 Nature Comm.
7 J. Am. Chem. Soc.
9 Nano Lett.

Total number of citations (ISI): 48817
H-index (ISI): 75

Total number of citations (Scholar): 64082
H-index (Scholar): 90

ResearcherID: http://www.researcherid.com/rid/K-5726-2012

Scholar: https://scholar.google.it/citations?user=4uDyhe0AAAAJ&hl=it

GRANTS/FUNDING

The major support for my research in France has been provided by the CNRS that hired, on permanent positions for my research groups in Paris, two computer scientists (for the development of first-principles codes) and three researchers.

National-Coordinator and PI of the ANR national-French grant: on Ab-initio Coupled Charge and Thermal Transport in Nanostructures, January 2009-June 2013
Total founding: 639572 Euros on three nodes Founding of our theory group: 216620 Euros

PI of the EU graphene Flagship initiative, October 2013-March 2018
Founding of our theory group (CNRS and IIT): 418000 Euros

PI of the EU graphene Flagship initiative, April 2018-March 2020
Founding of our theory group (IIT): 194000 Euros

Co-investigator (PI Abhay Shukla) of the the ANR national-French grant on SUPERTRAMP - Beyond Graphene: Doping, superconductivity and Phase transitions in 2D, January 2012-December 2014
Founding of our theory group: 50000 Euros

Co-investigator (PI Matteo Calandra) of the the ANR national-French grant: on Electric transport and superconductivity in Transition Metal Dichalcogenides nanolayers
January 2014-December 2017
Founding of our theory group: 207584 Euros

PI of the PRIN propject Tuning and understanding Quantum phases in 2D materials - Quantum2D, June 2019: 898924 Euros

PI of the ERC-Synergy grant MOmentum and position REsolved mapping
Transmission Electron energy loss Microscope - MORE-TEM, Mai 2021-: 1 935 113 Euros

I received support from the EU to hire three Marie-Curie individual-fellowship postdocs (two-years each) and from the CNRS to hire a two-year postdoctoral research

INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSABILITIES

2016-2020: coordinator of the PhD program in Physics at Sapienza, Universita di Roma.

2013-2015: member of the "Comite national de la recherche scientifique" of CNRS, section 3. The comite selects, at the national level, the researchers to be recruited (about 20 permanent positions/year), judges the activities of CNRS agents and laboratories, selects the agents to be promoted.

RESEARCH ACHIEVEMENTS

My activity focuses on the prediction of the physical properties of complex materials using first-principles electronic structure methods, and the development of original conceptual theories, methods, and algorithms to treat interacting electrons.

-Simulation of spectroscopies
I have given particular emphasis to collaboration with experimental groups in very diverse fields, and to the use of ab-initio calculations to predict and interpret spectroscopic data. I have pioneered several original developments in this field especially for magnetic spectroscopies in extended systems and applied all these methods extensively, with e.g. many recent notable applications in vibrational spectroscopies for carbon nanotubes and graphene. I developed the first theory for the first-principles calculation of NMR/EPR parameters in solids. Previous methods could deal only with finite systems. Our new theory has been implemented in two codes, Quantum Espresso and Castep-NMR, that are nowadays widely used within the experimental community of solid-state NMR. I have been working in collaboration with several experimental NMR groups to use the NMR codes for the interpretation of NMR spectra in silicate crystals and glasses, in zeolites, in biomolecular crystals, water, minerals, and in boron-rich materials. I have also developed methods and codes for the efficient simulation of Raman, IR and Xanes spectra, for the non-linear electrical susceptibility, the magnetic susceptibility, and the orbital magnetization. I identified very large non-adiabatic effects (crucial to interpret experimental data) in the Raman spectra of carbon-nanotubes, graphene and, more in general, in layered metals.

-Phonon-mediated superconductivity
The coupling of phonons with electrons is another important topic of my research. I studied several phonon mediated superconductors, identifying the most relevant phonons and and electron-phonon interactions. I studied the origin of superconductivity-variation in Te under pressure. In MgB2, I extracted from experimental inelastic X-ray scattering data, the electron-phonon coupling parameters. I studied the effects of magnetism and doping on the electron-phonon coupling in BaFe2As2. I suggested that highly doped diamond (BC5) and hole-doped icosahedral Boron compounds are potential candidates for high Tc superconductivity. I identified and characterized the electron-phonon coupling responsible for superconductivity in CaC6, KC8 and in other intercalated graphite, the charge-Density Wave and Superconducting Dome in TiSe2, the intercalant and intermolecular phonon assisted superconductivity in K-doped picene, the inverse isotope effect in superconducting palladium-hydrates. I have proposed that phonon-mediated superconductivity can be induced in graphene by coating it with metal ions. I studied the electron-phonon interaction and the important role of anharmonicity in H3S at high pressure, the superconductor with the highest Tc (203 K) so far measured. For the description of the electron dispersion and of the electron-phonon interaction I have implemented an approach that takes advantage of the localization in real space of the electronic Wannier-function. Such model has the computational complexity of a TB Hamiltonian but retains the accuracy of the DFT ab-initio calculations. In graphene I demonstrated how the e-e interaction and the electron doping modulate the electron-phonon interaction.

-Carbon nanotubes and graphene
I explained theoretically (in the most cited PRL of 2006) the origin of the characteristic feature of graphene Raman spectra that is currently used to count the number of layers present in a graphene sample. This technique is nowadays used in most experimental papers to identify monolayer and bilayer graphene. I predicted (anticipating a subsequent experimental confirmation) that Raman can also be used to measure the doping level of graphene and carbon nanotubes. I predicted and identified, in experimental data, the presence of significant Kohn anomalies in the phonon dispersion of carbon nanotubes, graphite and graphene. I used these Kohn anomalies, together with the Raman and IR lifetimes and temperature-shifts, to obtain, from experiments, accurate values of the electron-phonon and phonon-phonon coupling of graphite based materials. I showed that in graphene and graphite DFT is not able to correctly account for the experimentally observed electron-phonon interaction and one need to include electron-correlation effects at the GW level. The detailed knowledge of the electron-phonon and phonon-phonon interaction parameters has allowed me to study the origin of current saturation in graphene and in metallic nanotubes at high field. In metallic nanotubes I showed that the decrease of the differential conductance at high field is due to the presence of hot phonons. I proposed to use isotope-enriched nanotubes to control the temperature of such hot phonons and to boost the electrical conductance of metallic tubes. Finally, a key step in the use of graphene in electronics is the possibility to cut atomically at and defected-free edges. With this goal I used first-principles DFT calculations to identify the most stable regular edged of graphene under different chemical environments.

-Anharmonicity, phonon-phonon interaction, CDW and thermal conduction
I developed a Monte-Carlo type of approach to treat, with ab-initio methods strong anharmonic systems beyond perturbation theory, using the Self-consistent Harmonic approximation. I am now using the method to describe temperature dependent phonons (and phonon properties) in CDW materials (NbSe2, NbS2), ferroelectrics, and thermo-electrics and H-based superconductors. When anharmonicity can be treated as perturbation, I also developed a new method to compute the thermal conductivity solving the Boltzmann transport equation taking advantage of a variational principle. I published a paper on diamond and I am now working of the thermal transport properties of 2D materials.

-Amorphous materials
I used the possibility of simulating NMR and Raman data to elucidate the local geometry and the medium range order in many dis-ordered system, including amorphous allumino-silicate glasses, silica, amorphous boron-oxides, amorphous carbon.

-Mineral-physics and geochemistry
I have also worked at the interface between solid-state physics and geology. I used DFT calculations to interpret the IR spectra of many natural minerals (especially clay minerals) including multiwall asbestos nanotubes. I showed that it is possible to use ab-initio calculation to compute accurate isotope equilibrium fractionation, one of the most important geological indicators (a properties determined by the quantum motion of the nuclei), among minerals and with liquid water.