Valerio Bellini

Since my Ph.D., I devoted my research studies in the characterization by means of semi-empirical, and ab-initio density-functional methods of the electronic, magnetic, and transport properties of low dimensional magnetic systems. I was initially interested in the study of the hyperfine interactions of impurity probe atoms at ferromagnetic interfaces, and of the effect of low dimensionality on the properties of magnetic nanostructures at surfaces, e.g. magnetic monoatomic rows on vicinal metal surfaces. During the Ph.D years, I approached the field of spintronics by studying Tunneling Magnetoresistance (TMR) junctions, by the analysis of the complex band structures of the semi-conducting spacers. As a post-doc I have followed several lines of research, i) high temperature superconductors (HTCS), e.g. Bi-2212 ii) hyperfine interactions at surfaces iii) exchange bias interfaces, e.g. Fe/NiO.

As a CNR researcher, my activities have mainly (but not only) been related to the study by DFT methods of electronic and magnetic properties of magnetic nanostructures, such as magnetic molecules, e.g. Cr rings, metallocenes, metal phthalocyanines, in the gas phase and adsorbed onto metallic (magnetic) substrates. In order to perform all the computations, I employ augmented plane-waves codes (WIEN2K and FLEUR), quantum chemistry packages (NWChem), as well as pseudopotential codes (VASP, Quantum Espresso, CP2K), and use massively parallel supercomputer resources granted by National (CINECA) and International initiatives (DECI-DEISA)

Lately my research interest has focused on the simulation of transition metal and rare earth adatoms, on a variety of surfaces (graphene/magnetic metals, transition metal dichalcogenides, insulator oxides). This work is carried out in close collaboration with experimentalists, in order to investigate the best candidate systems for the realization of single atom magnets (SAMs).