Latest News

Papers, awards, and people. Day-to-day lab life is on Instagram @schooplab; department news at @princetonchem and X.

September 2026

Doping steers how a square net distorts

Josh and coworkers track the structural evolution of PrSbₓTe₂₋ₓ₋δ in Physical Review Materials, mapping how the charge density wave shifts from a single wave vector to a multiple-q phase as Te replaces Sb in the square net.

Phys. Rev. Mater.

August 2026

A tribute to Roald Hoffmann’s orbital perspective

Emily and coworkers trace how dimensionality shapes electronic structure across square-net-derived bonding motifs, in an invited contribution to the Inorganica Chimica Acta special issue honoring Roald Hoffmann.

Invited perspective

August 2026

A new family of superconductors in the PtPb₃Bi structure type

Lior and coworkers report in Chemistry of Materials a set of superconductors built on the PtPb₃Bi structure type.

Chem. Mater.

August 2026

One-dimensional conduction channels in a correlated Mott insulator

With Maia Vergniory’s group, the team shows in Nature Communications that obstructed Wannier charges produce one-dimensional conduction channels in NiS₂.

Nat. Commun.

July 2026

PCCM renewed as an NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Center

The Princeton Center for Complex Materials receives $18 million over six years, through 2032, with Leslie serving as Center Director.

PCCM

June 2026

Lattice instabilities can steer epitaxy

Nitish and coworkers show in ACS Nano that a Peierls-like instability in TaCo₂Te₂ directionally locks the growth of a symmetry-mismatched epilayer, suggesting structural modulations as a design tool for heterostructures.

ACS Nano

May 2026

Emily Ward wins the Nat C. Robertson *42 Graduate Fellowship

Princeton Chemistry’s award for outstanding achievement by a first-year graduate student goes to the Schoop Lab.

Student award

April 2026

Emily Ward awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

Emily joins the group’s NSF Graduate Research Fellows: Connor Pollak, Xin (Jason) Zhang, Gabrielle Carrel, and alumni Scott Lee and Brianna Hoff.

NSF GRFP

May 2026

Schmidt Transformative Technology Fund award

Together with Andrei Bernevig, we received Schmidt funding to build an AI-guided library of twistable quantum materials.

Funding

April 2026

A machine-predicted superconductor, made real

With the Kim group at Cornell, an interpretable machine-learning model predicted the superconductor PtPb₃Bi (predicted Tc 2.93 K); we grew it and measured 2.98 K. More members of the family followed.

Preprint

February 2026

A printable antiferromagnet

Ten minutes of sonication in water turns an air-sensitive precursor into a stable ink of core-shell antiferromagnetic nanosheets. Fang’s paper appears in Chemistry of Materials.

Chem. Mater.

August 2025

Leslie named co-PI of the NSF AI Materials Institute

Princeton joins the Cornell-led, $20M NSF institute (AI-MI) that pairs artificial intelligence with real synthesis and characterization; Leslie serves as co-PI and on the executive management team.

AI-MI

January 2025

Leslie receives the PECASE

The Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers is the highest honor the U.S. government gives to early-career researchers.

Award

January 2025

A chemical design strategy for noncoplanar magnets

Grigorii, Milena, and coworkers show in Nature Communications how to design magnets with giant Hall responses instead of finding them by accident.

Nat. Commun.

September 2024

A facile route to flat bands

Simple chemical rules point to kagome materials with flat electronic bands near the Fermi level.

Featured

March 2023

Scalable 2D superconductors from a beaker

Xiaoyu’s Science Advances paper delivers an air-stable, water-based superconducting monolayer ink.

Sci. Adv.

Profile

Using the logic of chemistry to build quantum materials

A Princeton profile of Leslie and the lab’s approach to materials with revolutionary properties.

Princeton profile

Schoop Lab · Department of Chemistry · Princeton University · Frick Laboratory, Princeton, NJ 08544