Jun Liu
North Carolina State University, NC·Materials Science
Most electronics store and move information by pushing electrical charge through wires, which wastes energy as heat. Spintronics instead uses spin, a built-in quantum property of electrons that acts like a tiny magnet, and could make memory, sensors and computers that use less power.
- Fields
Materials Science
Physics
Chemistry
- Topics
spintronics
chirality
chiral hybrid perovskites
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- 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.
- Measure anisotropic spin absorption by injecting pure spin current with spin pumping and ultrafast magneto-optical Kerr effect techniques, varying the angle between spin polarization and the chiral axis.
- Test whether the orientation and strength of the molecular chiral axis, rather than overall crystal symmetry, determines how strongly spin current is absorbed in each direction.
- Develop chirality descriptors, quantitative measures of structural handedness, that correlate molecular and crystal structure with spintronic behavior.
More about the research
This project asks whether chirality can steer spin without any magnetic elements. Chirality is "handedness": a structure that, like a left hand, cannot be turned into its mirror image.
Why it matters
Spin-based devices could cut the power use and heat of data storage, sensing and computing hardware. This work could lead to compact, reconfigurable spintronic components that contain no magnetic elements. Its design principles, linking molecular handedness to spin transport, could guide the semiconductor industry toward energy-efficient and scalable parts.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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.
Wanyi Nie
University at Buffalo, NY·Materials Science
Grow and characterize heterostructures of chiral hybrid perovskites and 2D transition metal dichalcogenides to study interlayer excitons, electron–hole pairs spanning the interface.
Min Ouyang
University of Maryland, MD·Chemistry
Establish chemical principles for making ligand-free, all-inorganic chiral hybrid nanostructures that combine plasmonic, excitonic and spin functions in a single particle.
The school
North Carolina State University: 40 labs on PI Pages, $717M a year on research, 603 research doctorates a year.
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