Yusong Bai
Brown University, RI·Physics·Early-career
In some materials, electrons interact strongly and behave collectively. This collective behavior can produce insulating states, magnetism, or superconductivity, in which current flows without resistance.
- Fields
Physics
Materials Science
Chemistry
- Topics
quantum materials
strongly correlated electrons
correlated phases
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2031
What they work on
- Establish correlated electronic states and electric-field-controlled metal-insulator transitions in heterostructures where ordered nanocrystal superlattices impose periodic potentials on atomically thin materials, using low-temperature electrical transport.
- Determine how superlattice geometry (triangular, square, rectangular or quasicrystalline) shapes quantum critical behavior, universality classes and competing electronic orders, combining electrical transport with cryogenic optical spectroscopy.
- Quantify how deliberately introduced disorder changes electron localization, phase stability and criticality near interaction-driven phase transitions by systematically tuning disorder strength, carrier density and electric field.
- Control the density of states, the number of available electron energy levels, in 2D materials through designed interactions between molecules and the 2D surface, building on molecular synthesis and 2D device fabrication.
- Detect local static and dynamic quantum phase information in 2D materials at molecular-level precision, using molecules as messengers and scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy (STM/STS) at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
More about the research
Understanding and controlling these correlated phases is a central challenge in physics and matters for future quantum information, sensing and energy-efficient electronics. Both projects explore new ways to steer electron behavior in atomically thin, two-dimensional (2D) materials by placing carefully designed structures next to them: ordered nanocrystal arrays in one project and molecules in the other.
Why it matters
This is mainly fundamental physics. Its stated relevance is to future quantum information, sensing and energy-efficient electronic technologies. Showing how symmetry, disorder and molecular interfaces set correlated quantum phases could eventually guide the design of materials whose insulating, magnetic or superconducting behavior can be engineered on demand.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
You Zhou
University of Maryland, MD·Physics·Early-career
Fabricate coupled bilayers of transition metal dichalcogenide semiconductors and test how their atomic structure and stacking affect the stability of Wigner crystals, ordered patterns of electrons.
Qimiao Si
Rice University, TX·Physics
Analyze quantum criticality in heavy fermion metals, where electrons behave as if very heavy, focusing on new regimes marked by singular charge responses near zero-temperature phase transitions.
Jedediah Pixley
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Physics
Determine how twist-angle disorder, the place-to-place variation in twist, alters electronic response in twisted bilayer graphene and twisted transition-metal dichalcogenide bilayers, using kernel polynomial calculations on large disordered models.
The school
Brown University: 23 labs on PI Pages, $375M a year on research, 251 research doctorates a year.
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