Research Overview

Technology is driven by new materials. Today's materials frontier lies in the design of emergent properties at interfaces and small length scales. Our research combines atomic layer-by-layer growth and atomic resolution imaging of materials, to uncover new physics and applications inaccessible via bulk synthesis and probes. We use scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and magnetic force microscopy (MFM) to investigate fundamental mechanisms of electron pairing and technical challenges of vortex pinning in high-T_c superconductors. We use conducting atomic force microscopy (CAFM) to control the insulator-to-metal transition in VO₂ at the nanoscale. We use STM to discover the strongly correlated topological states in SmB₆. We design acoustic metamaterials to mimic and understand quantum properties.