Microwave impedance microscopy goes nonlinear🌀 in our new paper featured as an Editor’s Pick 👉 at Applied Physics Letters! This work provides a quantitative framework for interpreting multi-harmonic MIM signals, and can enable more quantitative nanoscale characterization of nonlinear materials, in particular semiconductors. Congratulations to the team, especially our Pi2 Summer Scholar at Berkeley Physics, where this project began. Undergrad research driving real impact!

Curious which machine learning optimizer works best for nanophotonic inverse design -- and whether meta-learning makes a difference? 🤔Check out our latest work, "Efficiency of machine learning optimizers and meta-optimization for nanophotonic inverse design tasks" in APL Machine Learning! 

Amogh, Siqi, and Xujia join Ma Lab: Amogh is a new grad student from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras and will work on advancing everything related to microwave microscopy and spectroscopy. Siqi and Xujia are BPIE exchange students and will work on physics-informed pre-optimization for inverse design. Welcome all!🚀

Our latest work, "Coherent spin wave excitation with radio-frequency spin–orbit torque" is out in the Journal of Applied Physics! We dive into the unexplored potential of using microwave📡 spin-orbit torque (SOT) to generate coherent spin waves in magnetic insulators -- higher efficiency, unique mode selectivity, reduced distortion, and more. Huge thanks to our co-authors Hossein Taghinejad and Prof. James G. Analytis, and congrats to Nate!🚀

🎉Our proposal, "Advanced Inverse Design of Planar Microwave and Millimeter Wave Devices" is selected by the NSF's CCSS Program! With our local collaborator Jun-Chau Chien, we aim to significantly expand the accessible design space of GHz-THz devices for classical and quantum applications, taking inspiration from nanophotonics and adapting to microwave-specific challenges and opportunities. 🚀

Our latest work, "Johnson-noise-limited cancellation-free microwave impedance microscopy with monolithic silicon cantilever probes", is published in Nature Communications! Led by Junyi, Nate, and in collaboration with Su-Di from Feng Wang group, we set a new sensitivity record for MIM AND made it drastically more accessible. Congrats, and looking forward to the new science this breakthrough enables! 

Eric was selected as a 2024 Hellman Fellow to pursue high-risk research on the mid-infrared fluorescent properties of optical phonons. This prestigious award, supported by the Society of Hellman Fellows Fund, recognizes early-career faculty who show promise for distinction in research. I am deeply thankful for this opportunity to expand our work and contribute further to a less-traveled direction!  

Eric was selected as a 2024 Google Research Scholar in the category of Applied Science, to explore Parsing Physics Literature with Large Language Models. The Research Scholar Program provides unrestricted gifts to support world-class research conducted by early-career professors. The idea of this project came out of an ongoing URAP project with Andrew and Khoa. Congratulations and we appreciate the support!  

The team of Mike Crommie, Eric Y. Ma, Alp Sipahigil, and Feng Wang at UC Berkeley Physics & EECS was selected by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation's Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Systems Initiative to develop an unprecedented Quantum-Limited Atomic Force Microscope based on recent advances in nano-optomechanics. It will be fun!

Nate was selected as a recipient of the prestigious Berkeley Connect Graduate Fellowship. This fellowship provides graduate students with research support and professional development. Nate will provide academic mentoring to undergraduates in Physics helping students build community and increase their sense of belonging at UC Berkeley. Congrats Nate!

Junyi's paper "Advanced microwave impedance microscopy for emerging materials and devices" is accepted by 2024 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium. Here we talked about how our recent breakthrough in microwave impedance microscopy (under review) enables a range of advanced sensing modalities. Congratulations and see you in DC in June!

Nate's paper "Physics-agnostic inverse design using transfer matrices" is published in APL Machine Learning. Here we demonstrated inverse-designing non-intuitive optical, acoustic, and quantum structures using a single unified framework. This work marks the 1st publication from the group at the interface of Physics and ML/AI. Much more to come soon.

Aditi, a MPS Scholar, Trey, a SEED Scholar, and Joshua, a Pi2 Scholar, join Ma Lab as undergraduate researchers this summer, to work on various aspects of microwave microscopy and spectroscopy. Welcome!

Junyi and Nate's paper on design principles of transmission-mode microwave impedance microscopy (T-MIM) is published in Applied Physics Letters. This work extends our recent quantitative understanding of conventional reflection-mode operation to transmission mode, and will allow us to build T-MIMs beyond the weak sampling regime.  

Eric won the prestigious Amazon Physical Science Fellowship! This award recognizes 3 individuals who have shown the skills necessary to bridge the gap between fundamental scientific results in the physical sciences and the development of impactful technologies. We thank Amazon for the generous support and look forward to more future collaborations with Amazon Science.

Our paper on the Reststrahlen effect in the optically-thin limit is published in Nano Letters, and selected as Cover! This paper established a general framework for treating coherent resonant response in optically-thin media, using hBN films across 5 orders of magnitude in thickness as a model system. 

Katie, Erfan, and Ruiyu join Ma Lab as undergraduate researchers. Welcome! Katie is a freshman in EECS, and Erfan and Ruiyu are Physics BPIE students.

Junyi and Adam's paper on universal signal scaling in microwave impedance microscopy is published in Applied Physics Letters today. The first original research paper from the group -- congrats! 

Junyi, Nate, and Lance join Ma Lab as the 1st postdoc, 1st graduate student, and the 1st CS major undergrad. Welcome!

Congrats to Jiu for being selected as a prestiguous Pi2 Summer Scholar! She will develop an open-source high-speed lock-in amplifier with external reference, mentored directly by Eric. 

Starting with an empty room, after a few weekends' cleaning and IKEA work, and thanks to the help of all the team members, our student office is now in great working condition! (yes we need better cable management and more shelves)

This is the maker/DIY spirit of Ma Lab in display -- easily one of the best student offices in the building with an extremely low renovation budget!

The 2022 Spring URAP cohort of three join Ma Lab! Check them out in Teams. Thanks to all who applied through URAP again. Feel free to reach out if you have ideas about the various Summer programs!

Our URAP projects for Spring 2022 are online! We are recruiting student apprentices with diverse sets of analog/digital/RF electronics and CS/data science skills this semester.

Our main lab renovation is "almost" ready, after a hectic week installing the optical tables and fixing last-minute issues. A subset of people who made this possible (from left to right): Caesar & Travis (superintendent) from Build Group, Thad (main architect) from Shaffer Architects, and Jed, our fearless project manager.

Adam and Yufeng become the first Ma Lab members through URAP. Welcome! Adam will work on designing and building a cost-effective high-performance microwave reflectometer, and Yufeng on making a multi-node real-time Cloud-enabled lab environment monitoring system. 

Thanks to all who applied for our URAP projects again. Feel free to check back in Spring!

Ma Lab has two Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (URAP) projects for Fall 2021, one for building microwave reflectometry using low-cost components, and the other for real-time Cloud-enabled lab environment monitoring. Check them out here!

Our main lab, Birge B260, with ~70% renovation done. You can see HEPA filters in the ceiling and overhead racks for the optical tables. The design and planning started well over a year ago. Kudos to the team!

Ma Lab kick-off party with perfect 1/1 attendance at the Sather Gate. Hello Berkeley!