Daniel Bediako
University of California-Berkeley, CA·Chemistry·Early-career
The way atoms are arranged in a solid, and the small ways that arrangement shifts, controls how the material handles electricity, light and magnetism. This research uses that link in layered materials called transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs).
- Fields
Chemistry
Materials Science
Physics
- Topics
transition metal dichalcogenides
intercalation compounds
vanadium
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Mar 2028
What they work on
- Synthesize vanadium-intercalated TMD crystals, which have vanadium atoms inserted between layers, that are predicted to be altermagnets, using solid-state synthesis and crystal growth.
- Determine how vanadium content and disorder in intercalated TMDs control their magnetic and electronic properties, using x-ray and electron diffraction, neutron scattering, magnetometry and electrical transport.
- Quantitatively map the strain and mechanical deformations that relax twisted moiré bilayers of semiconducting TMDs, using the lab's interferometric 4D-STEM electron diffraction imaging method.
- Measure in operando how an applied electric field or uniaxial stretching alters relaxed TMD moiré structures, and correlate the changes with photoluminescence and transport data.
More about the research
TMDs are crystals made of sheets of metal atoms sandwiched between sulfur, selenium or tellurium atoms, and the sheets can be peeled down to a single atomic layer. One project inserts vanadium atoms between the layers to create new magnetic materials. The other studies how stacked, slightly twisted sheets bend and strain. Both ask the same question: how does atomic structure dictate useful properties, and how can chemists control that structure on purpose?
Why it matters
This work could help in designing materials for spintronics, electronics that store information using the electron's spin. Such devices may offer denser storage, lower power use and faster switching. The work could also show how to use strain as a control knob for tuning the optical and electronic behavior of atomically thin semiconductors in future optoelectronic devices.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Saien Xie
Princeton University, NJ·Materials Science·Early-career
Determine how thermodynamic and kinetic factors govern the formation of epitaxial interfaces, crystal-aligned boundaries, between two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides with controlled composition and structure at nanometer length scales.
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.
Christian Binek
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, NE·Physics
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.
The school
University of California-Berkeley: 46 labs on PI Pages, $1.1B a year on research, 825 research doctorates a year.
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