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

随着2004年第一个二维材料石墨烯的分离，二维（2D）材料研究开始出现。石墨烯是一种单原子厚的碳原子薄片，排列成蜂窝状晶格。由于其特殊的性能，它被认为是一种潜在的广泛应用的材料。它是已知的最薄、最坚固的材料，它是透明的，导电性能甚至比铜还好。它完全不受气体和液体的渗透，而且非常灵活。在过去的几年里，科学界一直在大力研究用分层材料制造其他单原子厚度的平面，包括绝缘体、半导体和超导体。这些具有不同性质的新型二维材料的可用性为材料设计和工程开辟了许多可能的机会。例如，通过将不同的二维原子片以所需的顺序堆叠在一起，将形成具有新特性的新的三维材料。最近，曼彻斯特大学的研究小组通过将石墨烯与半导体二硫化钼结合，制造出一种新型垂直晶体管，证明了这一概念。受到这一初步结果的启发，我特别感兴趣的是制造具有类似于高温层状超导体结构的新型层状材料。超导是一种零电阻和完全排除磁场的现象。在高温超导体（HTS）中，超导性是由原子的导电层和绝缘层交替产生的，这就形成了高温超导体晶体。随着不同二维晶体的可用性，我设想通过堆叠不同的二维晶体来设计具有相似结构的材料。寻找高温超导是一个雄心勃勃的项目，但如果我能成功地基于这些新材料制造高温超导，这可能会引发巨大的兴趣。

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.