Prof. Andrew M. Rappe
Professor of Chemistry
Professor of Materials Science and Engineering
Prof.
Andrew M. Rappe graduated with his B.A. in Chemistry and Physics, from
Harvard University in 1986, earned his Ph.D. in Physics and Chemistry
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992, was a
postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at Berkeley from
1992-1994, and has been faculty at Penn since 1994. Andrew is the
founding co-Director of Pennergy. He teaches courses in Quantum
Chemistry, Statistical Mechanics, General Chemistry, and Physical
Chemistry, as well as the VIPER seminar.
Andrew’s research
revolves around ferroelectric phase transitions in oxides, surface
chemistry and catalysis of complex oxides, and the interplay between the
two. Andrew and his students look for new phenomena that occur when
different components are brought together. For example, they examine
molecules adsorbing on metal surfaces, in order to understand the effect
of surface composition and structure on preferred adsorption sites,
dissociation pathways, and vibrational dynamics. They also study how the
compositions of oxide solid solutions lead to Angstrom-scale chemical
structure, nanometer scale structural disorder, and long-range
ferroelectric and piezoelectric properties. These studies find
real-world applications in catalysis, corrosion, SONAR, fuel cells and
other important technologies. Whenever possible, the Rappe group models
systems analytically, in order to extract general principles and simple
pictures from complex systems.