Welcome to the Zhu lab at Penn State!

Research in the Zhu lab investigates the electronic properties of low dimensional materials and nanostructures. Our current projects focus on layered materials including graphene and transitional metal dichalcogenides such as (Mo/W)(S/Se)₂. These atomically thin materials possess unique electronic structures that lead to novel collective phenomena in two dimensions and opportunities to create new device concepts that are based on bottom-up, layer-by-layer assembly techniques. We seek to understand the properties of pristine materials and exploit the role of substrate, defect, interface, stacking and heterojunctions to create new physics and functionalities, combining synthesis, nanofabrication, low-temperature transport and a suite of powerful characterization techniques.

Current research topics

A selection of past projects