Symposium Sessions

Please contact the symposium organizers with questions.

Strain and defect engineering are effective means to achieve versatile functionalities in materials. Due to their weak interlayer coupling, several physical properties of van der Waals (vdW) solids show high sensitivity with strain, e.g. bandgap shift, Raman peak shift and thermal conductivity change. With mechanical stretching/bending approach, strains of several percent can be realized. Very recently, a diamond anvil cell technique was introduced to generate more than 10% hydrostatic compressive strain in vdW semiconductors, making it possible to study transport phenomena under extremely nonequilibrium conditions. Furthermore, nanoscale wrinkles/crumples, blisters and bubbles can be created to enable localized, heterogeneous straining of vdW semiconductors. Additionally, rich forms of defects are present in vdW solids synthesized with chemical vapor deposition and molecular beam epitaxy. Defects are usually pictured as carrier traps or recombination centers. Recent discoveries suggest that defects can also serve as quantum emitters or spin trappers, and enable new quantum phenomena such as hydrodynamic electron transport.

This symposium will cover a broad range of emergent functional phenomena in vdW solids enabled by strain and defect engineering, including thermal, electrical, magnetic properties, as well as some quantum phenomena involving many-body interactions among phonons, electrons, magnons, etc. The materials will include not only graphitic materials, transition metal dichalcogenides, but also some emerging families of ferromagnetic materials, such as FePS₃.

Topics will include:

• Experimental investigation of structural, electrical, and thermal properties under strain
• Theoretical and computational predictions of thermal, electrical, optical and magnetic transport of layered semiconductors under strain or in the presence of defects
• Quantum phenomena in atomically thin materials
• Phase and transport property transition under extreme strain
• 2D device based on strain and defect engineered functionalities
• Defect-carrier interaction in van der Waals solids
• Band-engineering in 2D materials with defects
• Strain tuned magnetic properties in van der Waals solids

Invited Speakers:

• Jong-Hyun Ahn (Yonsei University, Republic of Korea)
• Horacio Espinosa (Northwestern University, USA)
• Andrea Ferrari (University of Cambridge, United Kingdom)
• Jose Garcia Aguilar (Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Spain)
• Berend Jonker (U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, USA)
• Philip Kim (Harvard University, USA)
• Chung Ning Lau (The Ohio State University, USA)
• Young Hee Lee (Sungkyunkwan University, Republic of Korea)
• Jun Lou (Rice University, USA)
• Thomas Muller (Technische Universität Wien, Austria)
• Sina Najmaei (U.S. Army Research Laboratory, USA)
• Keith Nelson (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
• Kayla Nguyen (Cornell University, USA)
• Teri Odom (Northwestern University, USA)
• Ruth Pachter (Air Force Research Laboratory, USA)
• Hong-Gyu Park (Korea University, Republic of Korea)
• Tereza Paronyan (Hexalayer LLC, USA)
• Abhishek K. Singh (Indian Institute of Science, India)
• Ping-Heng Tan (Institute of Semiconductors, CAS, China)
• Qing Hua Wang (Arizona State University, USA)
• Xiaojia Wang (University of Minnesota, USA)
• Junqiao Wu (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
• Guangyu Zhang (Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China)
• Yuanbo Zhang (Fudan University, China)

Symposium Organizers