Barnaby Levin

Barnaby’s main research interests are in the use of transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to characterize materials that can contribute to sustainable energy use. By helping us to understand the fundamental nature of how materials behave at the nanoscale and the atomic scale, TEM provides vital information for the design of more cost effective energy materials.

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Barnaby received his Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Cornell University in 2017. Under the supervision of Prof. David Muller, Barnaby used TEM to characterize a broad range of different materials, including lithium-sulfur battery electrodes, platnium fuel cell catalysts, biochar, and paint from historic art masterpieces.
Barnaby received his undergraduate degree in Physics from the University of Oxford in 2011. During the course of his studies, Barnaby worked under the supervision of Prof. Henry Snaith to fabricate and test solid state dye-sensitized solar cells.

Barnaby is a member of the Microscopy Society of America, the Microbeam Analysis Society, the Royal Microscopical Society, and the Materials Research Society.

Select Publications

Characterizing sulfur in electron microscopy: These papers resulted from a PhD project on how to suppress sulfur sublimation in vacuum. Cryo-electron microscopy or environmental-electron microscopy must be used to allow lithium-sulfur battery electrodes, and other samples containing elemental sulfur, to be characterized without sublimation artifacts:

B.D.A. Levin, M.J. Zachman, J.G. Werner, R. Sahore, K.X. Nguyen, Y. Han, B. Xie, L. Ma, L.A. Archer, E.P. Giannelis, U. Wiesner, L.F. Kourkoutis & D.A. Muller, “Characterization of Sulfur and Nanostructured Sulfur Battery Cathodes in Electron Microscopy Without Sublimation Artifacts” Microscopy and Microanalysis, 23, 155-162 (2017).

R. Sahore, B.D.A. Levin, M. Pan, D.A. Muller, F.J. DiSalvo, E.P. Giannelis, “Design Principles for Optimum Performance of Porous Carbons in Lithium–Sulfur Batteries”, Advanced Energy Materials, 6 (14), 1600134, (2016).

N. Zhang, B.D.A. Levin, Y. Yang, D.A. Muller & H.D. Abruña, Porous Fe3O4 Nanospheres as Effective Sulfur Hosts for Li/S Batteries, JECS. 165 (9), A1656-A1661 (2018).

X-C. Liu, Y. Yang, J. Wu, S. Zhou, B.D.A. Levin, et. al. Dynamic Hosts for High Performance Li-S Batteries Studied by Cryo-TEM and In Situ XRD, ACS Energy Letters, 3, 1325−1330 (2018)

Electron Tomography: Papers on electron tomography data and software for use by the broader scientific community. Check out our tomography visualization software at www.tomviz.org.

B.D.A. Levin, E. Padgett, C-C. Chen, M.C. Scott, R. Xu, W. Theis, Y. Jiang, Y. Yang, C. Ophus, H. Zhang, D-H. Ha, D. Wang, Y. Yu, H.D. Abruña, R.D. Robinson, P. Ercius, L.F. Kourkoutis, J. Miao, D.A. Muller, R. Hovden, “Nanomaterial datasets to advance tomography in scanning transmission electron microscopy”, Sci Data, 3, 160041 (2016).

B.D.A. Levin, Y. Jiang, E. Padgett, S. Waldon, C. Quammen, C Harris, U. Ayachit, M. Hanwell, P. Ercius, D.A. Muller, R. Hovden “Tutorial on the visualization of volumetric data using tomvizMicroscopy Today, 26 (1), 12-17 (2018).

For a full list of published journal articles and conference proceedings, see Barnaby’s page on Google Scholar.

Contact Information

Email: blevin2@asu.edu

Mailing Address:
PO Box 876106,
501 E Tyler Mall, ECG316,
Tempe,
Arizona,
85287-6106
USA