Dr. Carlo Pignedoli

Deputy Group Leader Atomistic Simulations

Carlo Pignedoli received his PhD in Physics in 2001 from the University of Modena (Italy) and joined Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology after post-doctoral research fellowships at the University of Modena (Italy) and at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory (Switzerland).
He is an expert in the simulation of the electronic and geometry properties of bulk semiconductors and interfaces,in the characterization of the atomistic mechanisms for chemical reactions at surfaces by means of abinitio methods, force fields and Monte Carlo methods. His atomistic simulations have been always focused on collaborations with experimentalists. This synergy allowed two major breakthroughs in his research:
During his work at IBM, in the team lead by Prof. Andreoni, research in the field of high-k materials contributed to the “establishment” of hafnium silicates as material to replace silicon oxide in the CMOS produced since second half of the ’00s. The research effort was acknowledged by a joint IBM Intel press release (March 2007).
In the field of surface supported chemistry, related to carbon nanostructures, a major achievement was the understanding of the atomistic details that characterize the metal supported cyclodehydrogenation reaction that is at the basis of the synthesis procedure introduced by the team lead by Prof. Fasel, to fabricate nanometer wide graphene nanoribbons with atomic precision.

Carlo Pignedoli is currently Senior Scientist and Deputy Group Leader of the Atomistic Simulations Group of the nanotech@surfaces Laboratory of Empa.

Fields of interest

Atomistic simulations by means of abinitio and force field methods; Automated procedures for high throughput calculations; Electronic properties of bulk and low dimensional materials with focus on surface physics and chemistry

Selected publications

P. Gasparotto, M. Fischer, D. Scopece, M. O. Liedke, M. Butterling, A. Wagner, O. Yildirim, M. Trant, D. Passerone, H. J. Hug, and C. A. Pignedoli, Mapping the Structure of Oxygen-Doped Wurtzite Aluminum Nitride Coatings from Ab Initio Random Structure Search and Experiments, ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 13 (4), 5762–5771 (2021). DOI: 10.1021/acsami.0c19270

A. V. Yakutovich, K. Eimre, O. Schütt, L. Talirz, C. S. Adorf, C.W. Andersen, E. Ditler, D. Du, D. Passerone, B. Smit, N. Marzari, G. Pizzi, C. A. Pignedoli, AiiDAlab - an ecosystem for developing, executing, and sharing scientifc workflows, Comput. Mater. Sci 188 (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.commatsci.2020.110165

S. Mishra, D. Beyer, K. Eimre, R. Ortiz, J. Fernández-Rossier, R. Berger, O. Gröning, C. Pignedoli, R. Fasel, X. Feng, P. Ruffieux, Collective All-Carbon Magnetism in Triangulene Dimers, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 59, 12041 - 12047 (2020). DOI: 10.1002/anie.202002687

A. V. Yakutovich, J. Hoja, D. Passerone, Alexandre Tkatchenko, C. A. Pignedoli, Hidden Beneath the Surface: Origin of the Observed Enantioselective Adsorption on PdGa(111), J. Am. Chem. Soc. 140, 1401-1408 (2018); DOI: 10.1021/jacs.7b10980

J. Wilhelm, D. Golze, L. Talirz, J. Hutter, C. A. Pignedoli, Toward GW Calculations on Thousands of Atoms, J. Phys. Chem. Lett.  9, 306–312 (2018); DOI:10.1021/acs.jpclett.7b02740

 

For a complete list of publications since 2008, please click here.

Dr. Carlo Pignedoli

Dr. Carlo Pignedoli
Deputy Group Leader Atomistic Simulations

Phone: +41 58 765 4206