Mahdi Sanati, Ph.D

Research Interests

The subject of structural phase transformations is not only of academic importance, but also of technological relevance. While a number of zero-temperature first-principles studies have been done on these types of transitions, less attention has been paid to the more difficult task of determining the effects of entropy on these transformations. Since almost all phase transitions occur at finite temperature, it is very important to consider the effects of thermal energy and whether they modify the results of zero-temperature band-structure calculations. Interest in developing such methods has, in particular, been appreciable for substitutional alloys. My research is devoted to applying the density functional theory to studying the structural phase transformation in materials at finite temperature.

Selected Publications

• M. Sanati, D. West, and RC Albers, “Electronic structure, phase stability, and chemical ordering of -phase in Ti3Al2X (X= Nb, V)”, Phys. Rev. B (in print).
• M. Sanati and A. Zunger, “ Evolution of L12 ordered domains in fcc Cu3Au alloy”, J. Phys. C 19, (2007).
• M. Sanati and A. Saxena: “Landau theory of domain walls for one dimensional asymmetric potentials”, Am. J. Phys., 71, 1005, (2003).
• M. Sanati, A. Saxena, T. Lookman, and R. C. Albers: “Landau free energy for bcc-hcp reconstructive phase transformation”, Phys. Rev. B, 63, 224114, (2001).