Vladimir Dobrosavljevic
Florida State University, FL·Physics
Some materials sit right at the edge between conducting electricity like a metal and blocking it like an insulator. This region is called the metal-insulator transition (MIT), and modern technology often needs to tune conductors close to it.
- Fields
Physics
Materials Science
- Topics
metal-insulator transition
Mott insulator
condensed matter theory
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Develop a theory of disorder-dominated metal-insulator transitions away from the Mott regime, using a polaronic picture and a self-consistent, nonperturbative saddle-point approach with systematic corrections.
- Examine how disorder affects the Mott regime, where electron repulsion dominates, and the related heavy-fermion regime, in which electrons behave as if very massive.
- Compare distinct transition regimes that can be reached in the same moiré bilayer devices, alongside Mott organic systems and ion-implanted semiconductor meta-materials, to build a unified picture of the transition region.
More about the research
New quantum materials and devices now let experiments reach this regime, but much of the resulting data remains unexplained. Near the transition, electrons repel one another and also scatter off imperfections, or disorder, in the material. Together these effects reshape the energy landscape the electrons move through and can stop them from moving at all.
Why it matters
A clearer theory of the metal-insulator transition could help researchers design experimental platforms with the electronic properties that quantum science and engineering require. It could also help explain the large body of unexplained data from new quantum materials and stacked two-dimensional devices.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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.
Yusong Bai
Brown University, RI·Physics·Early-career
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.
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.
The school
Florida State University: 15 labs on PI Pages, $461M a year on research, 481 research doctorates a year.
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