Austin Peay’s strategic plan pays off with undergraduate research opportunities
(Posted on Thursday, March 30, 2023)
In Austin Peay State University’s new strategic plan unveiled last year, one of the pillars focuses on the student experience. That pillar has several goals including fostering meaningful opportunities and experiences for student engagement and exploration. It also strives to help students engage beyond the classroom and to become self-advocates for their educational and career goals.
Sophomore Yuriy Holovchak, who is double majoring in engineering physics and computer science, is the epitome of the university’s efforts.
He recently presented the research he did with Drs. Roman Golovchak and Andriy Kovalskiy – professors in Austin Peay's Department of Physics, Engineering and Astronomy – in Posters at the Capital in February. Their project was titled “Special Glasses for Integrated Photonic and Electronic Platforms.”
Holovchak and recent graduate Jarres Plummer researched a new type of amorphous equichalcogenide thin films that simultaneously contain all three chalcogen (S, Se, Te) atoms.
During his research, Holovchak participated in sample preparation, developed experimental setup and measured the temperature dependence of the optical gap and electric resistivity in the chalcogen-rich and antimony-rich equichalcogenide thin films. As a result, a phase-change memory effect, superior photosensitivity and linear decrease in the optical gap with temperature have been discovered in these materials, making them perfect candidates for sensor, solar energy conversion, phase-change memory and telecommunication applications.
Holovchak and Plummer were included as co-authors in two recent peer-reviewed papers with Golovchak and Kovalskiy: “Broadband Photosensitive Medium Based on Amorphous Equichalcogenides” – published in ACS (American Chemical Society) Applied Electronic Materials; and “Phase-Change Materials Based on Amorphous Equichalcogenides” – published in Scientific Reports (in the Nature Portfolio). Scientific Reports is a highly prestigious peer-reviewed source and the most-cited journal in the world, with more than 696,000 citations in 2021. The publication receives widespread attention in policy documents and the media.
More personally for Holovchak, these research experiences are invaluable to his undergraduate studies. He learned in-lab skills such as preparing optical and electrical setups in a professional environment and how to control the materials he’s performing measurements on.
“The skills of operating modern lab equipment and creating proper setups to obtain required data are the ones I plan on mastering during my undergraduate years at Austin Peay,” Holovchak said. “Because of these types of experiences, and the possibility of working closely with each professor at the university, Austin Peay has truly been a blessing to have as the driving force of my undergraduate studies.”
Holovchak plans to pursue a Ph.D. in physics after he graduates from Austin Peay and work with quantum technology firms, or even set up a quantum technology company.
More about the research
The department’s research took approximately one year to complete, with the professors collaborating with other institutions across the world: the University of North Carolina, Greensboro; the University of Lviv, Ukraine; Rzeszow University, Poland; and the University of Rennes, France. The National Science Foundation and the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nano-engineering also supported the research.
“Collaborating with other institutions gives us access to instruments we don’t have and stuff that we can’t do,” Golovchak said. “The average cost of the scanning electron microscope is $500,000, for example.”
The group found that the optical properties, temperature and exposure wavelength dependence of DC electrical conductivity of the amorphous equichalcogenides were comparable with those for halide perovskites, making them an attractive alternative in the fields Holovchak mentioned above. A thermally-induced high-to-low resistivity switching in antimony-rich equichalcogenides, on the other side, makes them suitable for integrated chalcogenide-based multifunctional platforms, neuromorphic computational systems, photonic devices and sensors.
Undergraduate research at Austin Peay is highly valued, as it prepares students for scientific careers and helps them develop important skills for working abroad. The small size of the university allows for a more hands-on approach to undergraduate research, which is not workable in larger institutions.
“For us, it’s one of the main goals that prepares students for scientific careers,” Kovalskiy said. “This undergraduate activity, especially if this is international cooperation and especially trips abroad, can be a huge experience, a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And it’s huge for acceptance in the best graduate schools.”
Golovchak noted that such opportunities are reserved for graduate students at larger universities.
For more information about Austin Peay’s new strategic plan, visit apsu.edu/strategic-plan.
For more about the Department of Physics, Engineering and Astronomy, go to apsu.edu/physics.
To see the full scientific paper, visit this ACS webpage and this Nature webpage.
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