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Traian Dumitrica
Nelson Assistant Professor
Email: td@me.umn.edu
Telephone: (612) 625-3797

Ph.D., 2000, Chemical Physics,Texas A&M University

Diploma, 1996, Condensed Matter Physics, The "Abdus Salam" Center for Theoretical Physics, Italy

B.S., 1992, Physics, University of Bucharest, Romania

Research

Research interest is in theoretical and computational aspects of materials science, with emphasis on the mechanical properties, stability, and behavior of distinct nanoscale objects (rods, tubes, beams, shells, plates, membranes etc). Due to the inherently small length scale, understanding the behavior of nano-objects must rely not only on heuristics and methods of mechanical engineering and structural mechanics, but also on solid state physics, methods of quantum chemistry, and statistical mechanics. The prevalent theoretical method employed in our group is molecular dynamics (MD). We use MD for various purposes, including (i) to investigate a system's behavior at finite temperatures (to study for example stochastic thermal fluctuations that help evaluate the mechanical elastic response, thermally-driven structural transformation, or melting transition); (ii) to describe the response of a material to intense ultrafast laser pulses (to explore induced coherent atomic motion, non-thermal structural transition, or disordering); and (iii) to determine an optimal structure (i.e., to locate a minima on the multidimensional potential-energy hypersurface). Current research projects include modeling of nanoparticle-surface collision processes (relevant for manufacturing with nanoparticle sprays and focused beams), mechanical response of pure and doped silicon nanospheres and nanowires, properties of nanoscale wires made of bismuth, and laser-induced coherent phonons in bismuth and carbon-based materials.

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