About

Shabnam Akhtari is a professor at the Department of Mathematics, located in the McAllister Building. Her research interests include Number Theory, Geometry of Numbers, and Diophantine Analysis. Her work focuses on these areas, contributing to the understanding of their underlying structures and properties.

Research topics

• Composite material
• Materials science
• Optoelectronics
• Nanotechnology
• Engineering
• Electrical engineering
• Physics
• Engineering physics
• Chemical physics
• Organic chemistry
• Thermodynamics

Selected publications

• Strain‐Induced Polar Interfaces in Ferroelectric Polymer Nanocomposites (Adv. Funct. Mater. 35/2025)

  Advanced Functional Materials · 2025-08-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Ferroelectric Polymer Nanocomposites In article number 2421825, Yang Liu, Qing Wang, and co-workers reveal the presence of strained interfaces in ferroelectric polymer nanocomposites by combining high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, first-principles calculations, and phase field simulations, which is essential to the formation of the polar interfacial chain conformation and benefit the design of various electroactive properties.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Breaking the energy density barrier in polymer film capacitors via molecular and interfacial design

  Journal of Colloid and Interface Science · 2025-10-02

  article1st author
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• Structures and mechanical properties of high-entropy carbides ceramics calculated based on first-principles

  AI & Materials · 2025-02-27 · 2 citations

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• Upcycling Bamboo Waste into a Water Evaporation Induced Generator with Sustained High‐Output Energy Density for Self‐Powered Sensors

  Advanced Sustainable Systems · 2025-08-13 · 4 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract Evaporation‐induced power generation has garnered significant attention as an emerging energy harvesting strategy. However, conventional water evaporation‐driven energy harvesting technologies rely on intricate nanostructures, which suffer from complex fabrication processes, high costs, and scalability challenges. This paper develops a novel Bamboo‐based Evaporation‐Induced Generator (BbEIG) using discarded disposable bamboo chopsticks. The inherent porous structure of bamboo enables efficient thermal energy harvesting from the environment through water evaporation and its subsequent conversion into electricity. At room temperature, the BbEIG achieves an open‐circuit voltage of 0.36 V and a short‐circuit current of 10 µA, demonstrating stable power output for 12 000 s. The power density of BbEIG is 2 µW cm −2 , which is currently a record. The device can charge a 10 000 µF capacitor to its saturation voltage within 40 min. By connecting 18 BbEIG units in series, an open‐circuit voltage of 7 V is achieved, sufficient to illuminate a light‐emitting diode (LED). Furthermore, the integrated system successfully powers a commercial temperature‐humidity sensor, enabling continuous operation. The results of this work show that the combination of disposable bamboo chopsticks and evaporation‐induced power generation provides a sustainable green energy supply strategy for distributed sensing networks.

  PublisherDOI

• Enhanced electrocaloric effect in relaxor ferroelectric polymers through hot press processing

  Applied Physics Letters · 2025-06-09 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  Electrocaloric relaxor ferroelectric polymers have been considered as dominant polymer materials for refrigeration applications. However, the magnitude of the electrocaloric effect remains relatively small, especially in the low electric field regime. Here, it is reported that using hot pressing at 40 MPa under a holding temperature of 100 °C and a holding time of 10 min as a postprocessing method, an improved electrocaloric temperature change of 4.7 K is achieved under a low electric field of 50 MV m−1, which exceeds pristine polymers by over 50%. The enhanced electrocaloric response is attributed to the stabilization of all-trans conformation caused by hot pressing, which facilitates the ease of electric field-induced disorder-to-order phase transition.

  PublisherDOI

• Giant Electrostrain in Lead-Free BiFeO ₃ –BaTiO ₃ Ceramics via High-Entropy Design

  ACS Nano · 2025-12-16 · 2 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  Piezoelectric actuators, enabling the conversion of electrical energy into mechanical strain, are pivotal in various electromechanical applications. The morphotropic phase boundary (MPB) approach has been widely used to enhance the electrostrain performance of piezoelectrics. It remains to be explored alternative frameworks beyond the conventional MPB method. Here, a high-entropy strategy is used to enhance the electromechanical response of ferroelectric materials with pristine composition near MPB. By incorporating chemical disorders through the high-entropy strategy, atomic disordered arrangements and severe lattice distortions are induced in the BiFeO3–BaTiO3 (BF-BT) system, thus promoting the formation of nanopolar regions and nanodomain structures, facilitating a more flattened energy profile and mutual phase transformation under an electric field and improving the electromechanical response activity of lattices. As a result, high-entropy BF-BT-based polycrystalline ceramics exhibit an ultrahigh electromechanical response with a giant unipolar electrostrain of 1.23% at 80 kV cm–1 with fatigue-free resistance to cyclic electric fields. The effective converse piezoelectric coefficient (d33*) reaches 1537 pm V–1, surpassing most lead-free piezoelectrics. Our work highlights the potential of high-entropy design in ferroelectric materials as high-performance piezoelectric actuators.

  PublisherDOI

• Broad-Temperature Electrocaloric Effect in Multilayered Ferroelectric Polymer Nanocomposites

  ACS Nano · 2025-11-28 · 1 citations

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  , respectively, over a temperature range of 0-80 °C. This work offers a promising design strategy for developing high-performance electrocaloric materials for thermal management in advanced microelectronic systems.

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• Enhanced Piezoelectricity in Stretched Relaxor Ferroelectric Polymers Near the Morphotropic Phase Boundary

  Macromolecules · 2025-08-30 · 2 citations

  article

  Morphotropic phase boundary (MPB) acting as a versatile tool has been used to improve the weak piezoelectric coefficients of ferroelectric polymers. However, there remain very few polymers exhibiting MPB, which are often induced by a conventional compositional approach. Here, the existence of the MPB in relaxor ferroelectric poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene-chlorofluoroethylene) terpolymers is reported, expanding the library of the MPB family. Moreover, it is found that without changing the composition, the relative stability between different crystalline phases, crystallinity, and crystallite size can be manipulated by varying the polymer processing conditions. A markedly enhanced piezoelectric coefficient d33 of −85.2 pC N−1 was obtained in terpolymers fabricated by combined uniaxial stretching and thermal annealing, corresponding to more than a twofold improvement over the untreated counterpart. This work therefore provides an alternative degree of freedom to optimize piezoelectric coefficients for polymer compositions close to MPB, which paves the way toward the scalable fabrication of high-performance ferroelectric polymers for flexible and wearable piezoelectric applications.

  PublisherDOI

• Superior dielectric energy storage performance at elevated temperatures enabled by precisely tailored MgO NPLs distribution in tri-layer polymer composites

  Nano Energy · 2025-11-15 · 4 citations

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• Scalable synthesis of graft ferroelectric polymers with enhanced piezoelectricity

  Science Bulletin · 2025-12-11 · 1 citations

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Frequent coauthors

• Brahim Dkhil

  CentraleSupélec

  287 shared

• Xiaojie Lou

  Xi'an Jiaotong University

  80 shared

• I. C. Infante

  Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

  70 shared

• Bobo Tian

  East China Normal University

  68 shared

• Jie Wei

  Xi'an Jiaotong University

  59 shared

• Qing Wang

  Northeastern University

  46 shared

• Xiangjian Meng

  University of Chinese Academy of Sciences

  44 shared

• Xiaofei Bai

  Tarim University

  38 shared

Education

• PHD

  Ecole centrale de Paris

  2016

Awards & honors

• Chinese Government Award for “Outstanding Self-Finance Stude…
• Udho, Parsini, Diwan Award in Chemistry, Department of Chemi…
• Pall Dissertation Award for Research Excellence, Department…