RS Fellow - EPSRC grant (2014): Exploring high temperature superconductivity in novel layered materials.

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Two dimensional (2D) material research has emerged with the isolation of the first 2D material named graphene, in 2004. Graphene is a single atom thick sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a honey comb lattice. It is considered as a potential material for different wide-ranging applications because of its exceptional properties. It is the thinnest and strongest material known and it is transparent and conducts electricity even better than copper. It is completely impermeable to gases and liquids and extremely flexible. For the last few years, the scientific community was heavily looking into the fabrication of other one atom thick planes from layered materials, including insulators, semiconductors and superconductors. The availability of these new 2D materials with diverse properties opens up many possible opportunities in materials design and engineering. For example, by stacking different 2D atomic sheets on top of each other in a desired sequence will result in the formation of new three dimensional materials with novel properties. Recently, the Manchester group demonstrated this concept by combining graphene with semiconducting molybdenum disulfide to fabricate a new type of vertical transistors.Motivated by this initial result, my particular interest is to fabricate novel layered materials with structures similar to that of high temperature layered superconductors. Superconductivity is a phenomenon of zero electrical resistance and complete expulsion of magnetic field. In high temperature superconductors (HTS), superconductivity arises from the alternating layers of conducting and insulating layers of atoms, which form the HTS crystal. With the availability of different 2D crystals, I envisage to design materials with a similar structure by stacking different 2D crystals on top of each other. The search for HTS is an ambitious project, but if I am successful in making HTS based on these novel materials, this could spark massive interest.