The Al Balushi Group is housed in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at UC Berkeley, with laboratory infrastructure designed to support synthesis, processing, characterization, and device fabrication of emerging electronic materials. Our facilities are centered on the growth and integration of two-dimensional materials, van der Waals heterostructures, semiconductor thin films, molecular precursors, and nanoscale device structures. The laboratory supports projects that connect materials chemistry, thin-film growth, interface engineering, and device function.

Our synthesis capabilities include chemical vapor deposition, metalorganic chemical vapor deposition, molecular precursor processing and laser-assisted materials processing. These tools allow us to study how precursor chemistry, surface interactions, temperature, pressure, light, and non-equilibrium processing conditions influence nucleation, crystallization, phase selection, and defect formation. Device fabrication is carried out through a combination of in-house processing and shared facilities at UC Berkeley, including the Marvell Nanofabrication Laboratory. These facilities provide access to lithography, deposition, etching, metrology, and wafer-scale processing tools, allowing the group to connect fundamental materials synthesis with device-level measurements and applications. Finally, the group uses advanced characterization tools across UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to study structure, composition, chemistry, and electronic properties.