John W. Freeland

John W. Freeland works in the X-ray Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL. He received his B.S. in Physics in 1990 from Beloit College, WI, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics in 1992 and 1996 respectively from The John Hopkins University.

From 1996-1998, he was a National Research Council (NRC) Fellow at the Naval Research Laboratory. From 1998-2003 he was an Assistant Physicist, X-ray Science Division, Advanced Photon Source, at Argonne National Laboratory, then in 2003 he was promoted to Physicist in this same Division.

To date, Freeland has published almost 130 articles in the area of condensed matter physics and materials science, of which many are in the highest profile venues (Nature, Science, Physical Review, Applied Physics Letters). His h-index of 23 and total number of citations (1900) attest to the impact of his research on these communities.

His research is focused on the application of advanced experimental probes to understand surfaces and interfaces in complex systems. Current interests include understanding electronic and magnetic properties at the interface between dissimilar complex oxides. The broken symmetry at the interface and altered environment is an interesting area to explore what happens to the behavior in a system with a large number of competing interactions. On the X-ray frontier, he has applied polarized X-rays and high-resolution diffraction to understand the connection between structure and properties to understand different facets of the interface problem. He has also pioneered the use of scanning probes to directly probe oxide interfaces. His recent work is focused on the non-equilibrium science in oxide systems. Freeland is using in-situ techniques to follow real-time phenomena ranging from optical control of oxides to catalysis on perovskite surfaces to watching materials grow to understand how interfaces form.