Andrew M. Rappe is Blanchard Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his A.B. in "Chemistry and Physics" summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1986, and his Ph.D. in "Physics and Chemistry" from MIT in 1992. He was an IBM Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley before starting at Penn in 1994.
Andrew received an NSF CAREER award in 1997, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 1998, and a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award in 1999. He was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2006.
Rappe was named Weston Visiting Professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 2014, and Ziqiang Professor at Shanghai University in 2016. He was awarded the Humboldt Research Award in 2017 and the Cheney Fellowship at University of Leeds in 2018.
Andrew is one of two founding co-directors of the VIPER honors program at Penn, the Vagelos Integrated Program in Energy Research.
Andrew has published more than 300 peer-reviewed articles. In recent years, he has become a leader in the theory of hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites and of topological materials. He has championed the use of the bulk photovoltaic effect for solar energy harvesting, and he has made seminal contributions to the theory of ferroelectric materials and to topological physics. In the field of electrochemistry, Rappe studies how nonstoichiometric surfaces, smart material substrates, and anomalous light-matter interactions yield electrocatalysts with breakthrough activity and selectivity for hydrogen evolution, oxygen evolution, and CO2 reduction reactions.
Research Description
The Rappe group develops new theoretical physical and chemical methods and applies them to a broad range of materials and challenges relating to energy conversion. A key focus of the group involves the study of light-matter interactions and quantum materials, including bulk photovoltaic effects (#1 and #12 below), hybrid perovskite materials for solar conversion (#3 and #9), and topological materials (#4 and #5). The group also has a broad focus on electrochemical energy storage via catalysis and ion migration for batteries (#6, #7, and #8). Another area of leadership for the group is the study of ferroelectric materials, including their polar phase transitions (#2), domain structure (#13, #14), piezoelectricity, stability at the nanoscale, optical responses (#1, #12), and composition modifications including relaxor ferroelectrics (#13) and next-generation silicon CMOS-compatible ferroelectrics (#11). The group also takes great interest in opening new chemical pathways through mechanochemistry, the application of force and stress (#10). Each of these topics is at the cutting edge of science, posing challenges that have not been faced previously. Accordingly, all of these areas are enabled by a vibrant methodological program to generate new physical models and computational approaches to predict novel properties. Taken together, this research team is solving problems in energy conversion that will ensure a sustainable energy future.
The Rappe group welcomes researchers of every background. Our projects benefit from expertise in chemistry, physics, materials science, mathematics, computer science, and other related fields. We live by the idea that "you never know where the next idea is going to come from". That could be from you, so if this research interests you, please don't hesitate to contact Prof. Rappe and his group.