The Fall 2021 MatSE 590 for graduate students consists of an exciting and jam-packed schedule. MATSE 590 is a colloquium (1-3 credits) consist of a series of individual lectures by faculty, students, or outside speakers.
Graduate students will receive a weekly email with information via @psu.edu email. Graduate students are required to attend all 590 Seminars. If you have any questions, please email Hayley Barnes at hjc24@psu.edu.
*Due to the ongoing Covid Pandemic this program is being offered virtually through Zoom. Please reference the weekly email from Hayley Barnes (hjc24@psu.edu) for Zoom link.
October 21, 2021
“Synthesis of quantum materials and heterostructures: challenges and opportunities”
Stephanie Law, Associate Professor of Material Science and Engineering, University of Delaware
Abstract
Topological insulators (TIs) are layered van der Waals materials that have two-dimensional surface states that house massless electrons. In this talk, I will first discuss our work on growing high-quality TI thin films and heterostructures. We find that the film/substrate interface is extremely important despite the use of van der Waals epitaxy, and we show that we can grow these materials both on inert substrates like sapphire and technologically-relevant semiconductor substrates like GaAs. After growing these materials, we can investigate their proper-ties through the excitation of Dirac plasmon polaritons. These are hy-brid modes comprising a photon and a plasmon, which is a collective electron oscillation. I will discuss the dispersion of these modes and show record high mode indices and extremely long polariton lifetimes. Using MBE, we can then grow layered structures comprising multiple topological and normal insulators, resulting in hybrid coupled plasmon modes which we can use to better understand the electron behavior in these structures. I will close by discussing our work on TI quantum dots for use as alternative qubits.
Biographical Information
Dr. Law is an Associate Professor in the department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Delaware with an affiliate appointment in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. She co-directs the UD Materials Growth Facility and is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology. She received her B.S. in Physics from Iowa State University and her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Illi-nois Urbana Champaign. She then held a postdoctoral position in the Electrical Engineering department at Illi-nois before moving to Delaware. Dr. Law has won the North American Molecular Beam Epitaxy Young In-vestigator award, the Department of Energy Early Career award, the AVS Peter Mark Memorial Award, the International Conference on Molecular Beam Epitaxy Young Investigator Award, and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 590 seminar for 10.21.2021 | 1.8 MB |