I am now pursuing a Ph.D. in physics at the University of Washington, Seattle as an experimentalist with multiple theoretical tools.
I work in Prof. Xiaodong Xu’s lab, but I also have a branch of projects collaborated with Profs. David Cobden, Matthew Yankowitz, Jiunhaw Chu, and Arthur Barnard labs.
I study emergent phenomena in novel quantum materials focusing on the following system:
Diverse methods are used to approach the physics in these platforms, including:
Novel device fabrication techniques for 2D materials
Many exotic 2D materials are extremely air-sensitive. We developed advanced fabrication techniques such as ultraclean backgate with a metal electrode on demand, stencil mask, anhydrous wet process, and van der Waals transfer in an inert environment.
Electronic transport
Basically (but not limited to!) measuring the resistivity of a material or a nanodevice. With the help of Jiunhaw Chu lab, we build an ultralow noise amplification system for measuring small resistance such as superconductor and quantum Hall system. The current noise level is 100 times lower than the room temperature lock-in amplifier with the same filter(24dB) and time constant(0.3s).
Optics
Baby-level, stationary optics with the reflection geometry, such as Raman/PL spectroscopy, MOKE/RMCD, and differential reflectance in cryogenic temperature and magnetic field.
Fiber optics.
I am now researching and developing a new dilution fridge platform for optoelectronics, together with efforts from Arthur Barnard’s lab. We are also ambitious to perform a scanning probe microscopy with a novel vibration isolation stage.
- Some novel things in my mind, such as transient transport, scanning probe microscope, etc.
I theorize excitation in nanodevices only with toy models, including continuum model, exact diagonalization, real-space transport simulation, finite element method and FDTD. It’s a strong belief to me that any model requiring beyond a personal computer (<1TFLOPS, 16GB) does not capture the key physics.
I used to share my understanding and knowledge in Q&A website Zhihu. I got more than 40k followers and ‘likes’!