Hanwei Gao
Florida State University, FL·Materials Science
Some crystals lack a mirror-image symmetry: they cannot be reflected through a central point and look the same. In such "chiral" crystals, electric current can behave differently depending on which way it flows.
- Fields
Materials Science
Physics
Chemistry
- Topics
chiral crystals
nonreciprocal transport
noncentrosymmetric materials
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2029
What they work on
- Design and synthesize chiral, noncentrosymmetric (lacking inversion symmetry) two-dimensional hybrid metal halides, layered organic-inorganic semiconductors, as a platform for studying nonreciprocal transport.
- Measure how the crystal structure and symmetry of hybrid metal halides relate to nonreciprocal transport, where current behaves differently in opposite directions, through physical property characterization.
- Use microscopic modeling in an iterative loop with synthesis and measurement to establish rules for designing crystals with programmable symmetry and tailored transport behavior.
More about the research
This effect is called nonreciprocal transport. It could lead to unusual devices for quantum sensing, telecommunications and advanced computing. Progress has been slow, however, because most inorganic crystals are not chiral, so there are few suitable materials to study.
Why it matters
Understanding how crystal symmetry controls the direction of current flow lays a foundation for new materials physics. Chiral semiconductors with tailored nonreciprocal transport could eventually enable new functions in quantum sensing, telecommunications and advanced computing hardware.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jun Liu
North Carolina State University, NC·Materials Science
Synthesize a library of chiral hybrid organic-inorganic semiconductors in which the handedness of the organic cations, and their alignment with the crystal's screw axis, are systematically tuned.
Mengxia Liu
Yale University, CT·Materials Science·Early-career
Design chiral hybrid perovskite heterostructures that boost spin polarization dependent on light's handedness and improve spin-to-charge conversion under broadband circularly polarized light.
Ajay Ram Srimath Kandada
Wake Forest University, NC·Physics·Early-career
Measure how excitons couple to lattice vibrations in 2D metal halide perovskites by recording noise in the amplitude and phase of the optical response after launching coherent phonons, to isolate how random lattice fluctuations drive anharmonicity and polaron formation.
The school
Florida State University: 15 labs on PI Pages, $461M a year on research, 481 research doctorates a year.
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