Christian Binek
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, NE·Physics
Layers of material only a few atoms thick can behave in ways the bulk material never does. When such layers are stacked or twisted against each other, new electronic and magnetic behaviors can appear at the boundaries between them.
- Fields
Physics
Materials Science
Engineering
- Topics
2D materials
two-dimensional magnets
van der Waals heterostructures
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Aug 2032
What they work on
- Engineer interfaces in oxide and van der Waals layered stacks to control magnetic and electric order, defects and spin textures, aiming at memristive devices and neuromorphic, brain-inspired computing.
- Develop MXenes, 2D transition-metal carbides and nitrides, whose chemistry is tuned to control optical, electronic and magnetic properties for flexible electromagnetic shielding and tunable photonic devices.
- Combine molecular beam epitaxy, electron microscopy, spectroscopy, theory and machine learning to build predictive links between atomic structure and material behavior.
- Stack and twist atomically thin magnetic and ferroelectric layers into artificial heterostructures, and map their moiré structure and magnetism with a low-temperature nitrogen-vacancy scanning microscope.
More about the research
These two grants study how atomic-scale structure controls these properties. The aim is to build memory, logic and computing devices that use less energy than today's silicon chips. One grant is a large multi-university materials research center. The other is a two-state collaboration focused on two-dimensional (2D) magnets. The abstracts describe the teams' shared goals rather than this lab's individual tasks.
Why it matters
Understanding how atomic arrangement creates magnetic and electronic behavior could lead to faster, more energy-efficient memory, logic and brain-inspired computing hardware beyond silicon. The work may also help device makers through spin-based electronics, flexible and printable electromagnetic shielding, and tunable optical components for communication and sensing.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Seongshik Oh
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Materials Science
Grow wafer-scale van der Waals heterostructures pairing the room-temperature 2D ferromagnet Fe3GaTe2 with topological materials Bi2Te3 or WTe2, using molecular beam epitaxy to achieve atomically sharp interfaces.
Chunhui Du
Georgia Institute of Technology, GA·Physics·Early-career
Determine how spin spreads through antiferromagnetic insulators and how their alternating Néel order switches, by imaging local magnetic fields with nitrogen-vacancy defects in diamond.
Keji Lai
University of Texas at Austin, TX·Physics
Measure the effective permittivity of excitons in monolayer semiconductors using cryogenic laser-illuminated microwave impedance microscopy, a scanning probe that senses local electrical response under light.
The school
University of Nebraska-Lincoln: 17 labs on PI Pages, $657M a year on research, 261 research doctorates a year.
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