The design, discovery, characterization and control of novel materials is perhaps the most important research area for humanity as it moves into the 21rst century. A myriad of societal problems concerning energy, clean water and air, and medicine all need to be solved by the discovery of new compounds with dramatically improved, or even new, properties. The search for such materials requires a blending of skills and mindsets that, traditionally, have been segregated into different academic disciplines: physics, chemistry, metallurgy, materials science. In this colloquium I will outline the basic philosophy and techniques that we use to search for novel materials. These include a combination of intuition, experience, compulsive optimism and a desire to share discovery.[1]

In the second half of the lecture, the specific case of superconductivity will be used as an example of one such search. Over the past couple of decades a growing sense of where and even how to search for new superconductors has been developing, with the recent discoveries of MgB2 and the FeAs based materials providing, at least for me, clear guidance. [2] Stories will be told, jokes will be cracked, slow burn puns will be deployed. Any resemblances to persons living or dead is coincidental.

[1] Paul C. Canfield, Rep. Prog. Phys. 83 [2020] 016501.
[2] Paul C. Canfield, Nature Materials 10 [2011] 259.

Bio:
Dr. Paul C. Canfield is a Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy and holds the Robert Allen Wright Endowed Chair in Physics at Iowa State University; he is a Senior Scientist in Ames National Laboratory. Over the past thirty years his research group has made over 10,000 growths of novel materials. His group has discovered new examples of superconducting, antiferromagnetic, ferromagnetic, topological, quantum critical, and strongly correlated materials and has used both pressure and chemical substitution to finely tune systems and ground states.

Dr. Canfield has won numerous awards including: the 2011 DOE Lawrence Award, the 2014 American Physical Society, David Adler Lectureship Award in the Field of Material Physics, a 2015 Humboldt Research Award, and the 2017 American Physical Society, James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials. He was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2001, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020 and a fellow of American Association for Advancement of Science in 2023.