| Details: |
Over the past decade or so the concepts of material engineering have
undergone a paradigm shift. This change is triggered by the discovery
and isolation of graphene, the perfectly flat membrane of hexagonally
ordered crystal of carbon atoms. Following graphene, several other
two-dimensional (2D) membranes were also discovered, and the members of
the 2D family is increasing very rapidly. These materials can be metal,
insulators or semiconductors, and hence can perform many different
tasks. In this talk, I shall explain how by clever mixing and matching
of different members of the 2D family can make new composite materials
that exhibit greatly enhanced functionality, as well as perform as a
versatile platform to discover new quantum states of matter. I shall
illustrate this with examples from recent work in our group on
electronic, optoelectronic and thermoelectric structures created from
atomic membranes of layered solids. In particular, I shall demonstrate
how some of the fundamental interactions in solid state physics can be
engineered at the atomic scale and exploited in a bottom-up approach. |