Francesco Montalenti's CV (brief version)
Born in Torino (Italy) on 06/22/1970, I immediately moved to Milano (Italy). Here, after obtaining in 1989 the high-school diplome at the Liceo Scientifico Salvador Allende (grade: 60/60), I started studying Physics at the University of Milano. In 1994 I completed all the requested exams with an average grade of 28.8/30, and I began working with Prof. G.P. Brivio on my Laurea Thesis, entitled He and Ne interaction with simple metals: ab initio results, which was succesfully discussed in May 1995 (grade: 110/110 cum laude). I then moved to Genova (Italy) where, after a written and oral examination, I was awarded a PHD-student position in Physics under the supervision of Prof. R. Ferrando. During the PHD years I became an expert in atomistic modeling of surface processes at metal surfaces, and in December 1999 I succesfully discussed my PHD Thesis, entitled Diffusion on channeled metal surfaces. Ten publications on international journals came out of my PHD work, including the discovery of a novel diffusion mechanism for one-dimensional clusters on Au and Pt(110)(1x2) surfaces [F.Montalenti and R. Ferrando, Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 1498 (1999)]. These results were key for obtaining a Directoral Funded post-doc position at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (NM, USA), where, starting in January 2000, I joined the Theoretical Division. Here, within Dr. A.F. Voter group, I worked for two full years on the development of the temperature accelerated dynamics method. Exploiting the unique possibility of extending the time scale offered by the innovative simulation approach, we were able to simulate crystal growth at typical experimental conditions while keeping a fully atomistic approach, and without needing any a priori information on the system. After publishing the results [F. Montalenti, M.R. Sorensen, and A.F. Voter, Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 126101 (2001)], the novelty and relevance of the method were widely recognized, so that I started to be frequently invited to give talks at international conferences and workshops. In November 2001, after two written and one oral examination following the evaluation of the scientific curriculum, I was awarded the italian starting Faculty position ("Researcher"; upgraded to "Tenured Researcher" in March 2005) at the University of Milano-Bicocca, within the Department of Materials Science. I left Los Alamos and started my present job in March 2002. In Milano I joined Prof. Leo Miglio's research unit, focused on modeling thermodynamic and kinetic aspects of semiconductor (Ge/Si) thin-film growth. Our research activity is twofold. On one side we are interested in modeling strain fields associated with heteroepitaxial structures (both films and nanostructures), analyzing the consequence of the elastic-energy release process on fundamental phenomena such as three-dimensional islands' stability, nucleation, and ordering, intermixing, dislocation injection, atomic diffusion, etc. To this goal our starting point are atomistic simulations (at different levels of complexity, ranging from classical potentials to DFT), and/or continuum elasticity theory, depending on the relevant length scales involved.
Using a combination of ab initio calculations, classical molecular dynamics simulations, and extensive modeling, in 2004 we were able to explain the pyramid-to-dome morphological transition experimentally observed in Ge three-dimensional islands grown on Si(001) substrates. This was the first example of a work performed in close collaboration with experimental groups, leading to a joined theoretical and experimental publication [F. Montalenti et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 216102 (2004)] . Several others followed, and the ability to build simple models trying to shed light on complex experimental observations became one of the main features of our group. While my involvement in method development, started in Los Alamos, is still active, since the start of my Researcher position in Italy I surely became a more applied theoretician.
More recently, we started tackling a second research topic. The goal is to understand at the atomic level which are the key mechanisms governing Si-film growth in typical PECVD (plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition) reactors. This work is done within L-NESS (Laboratory for epitaxial nanostructures on silicon and for spintronics), a inter-university center of the Politecnico di Milano and of the University of Milano-Bicocca, whose experimental laboratory located in Como makes use of an innovative reactor for growing high-quality materials for electronics and opto-electronics. Very recently [Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 046105 (2008)], we have been able to understand the atomic-scale mechanism leading to hydrogen-enhanced crystallinity in PECVD-grown Si films, an issue of particular relevance in the production of nanocrystalline films for solar cells. While the head of my group is Prof. Miglio, I'm directly in charge of following the work of several collaborators (undergraduate students, PHD students, and post-docs), and I actively participate in deciding new research projects, and in writing funding proposals. Presently, we have five different projects funded (2 european STREP project, 2 Cariplo-Foundation projects, and one italian MIUR project).
The first PHD student I have been following as scientific tutor, Silvia Cereda, discussed her Thesis in December 2007. For her work, she won the ENI AWARD 2008 "Debut in research".
Overall, I published around 60 papers on international journals (among them, 8 on Phys. Rev. Lett., 3 on Appl. Phys. Lett., 10 on Phys. Rev. B, and a review on Annu. Rev. Mater. Res. cited 120 times in five years) which collected, so far, more than 700 citations. I gave 32 invited talks (including one at the American Physical Society March Meeting 2004 and one at the American Chemical Society National Meeting 2006), summing up conferences, workshops, and seminars. Only 20% of them were given in Italy, something which demonstrates the internationally-recognized level of my work. I regularly referee papers for several journals, including Phys. Rev.
Lett., Phys. Rev. B, Nanotechnology, Surf. Sci., etc.
I now have a six-years experience in teaching at the undegraduate level, acquired as a professor-in-charge for the classes "Elements of Statistical Thermodynamics" (an introduction to statistical thermodynamics), and "Statistical Thermodynamics of Materials" (atomistic modeling including actual coding), and I also gave lectures for the PHD program in Materials Science of our University. My classes always received excellent judgements from the students.