Potential Crystal: SmAgGe is in the Oven!

Our first potential material for study is in the oven!

Today, after weeks of literature review and days spent waiting for the arrival of Samarium, I finally got to grow my SmAgGe, a candidate for research that I have been considering.

You might be wondering how I decided to grow SmAgGe. Well, it wasn't out of the blue. If you've followed the earlier parts of my quantum research journey, you know that I've been conducing extensive literature review to prepare for this moment. Let me explain what exactly I was doing a little more in-depth.

My mentor gave me a list of roughly 750 1-1-1 chemical compounds (we were focusing on 1-1-1 materials for my project). For each material on the list, I searched it up in the Materials Project Database, modeled its crystal structure on the VESPA software, and read through all prior publications on the material on Google Scholar.

In summary, today I successfully grew my first crystal. Stay tuned for new material syntheses coming soon!