Peter H. Jacobse

I am Peter Jacobse, an early-career researcher in physics and chemistry pursuing a dream of creating and investigating new quantum materials. I use scanning probe microscopy (and - luminescence) and theoretical methods like density functional theory (DFT) to do so. I am currently working at Rice University (Geoffroy Hautier group) and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Alexander Weber-Bargioni group) after previous appointments at the University of California, Berkeley (Michael F. Crommie group) and Dartmouth College (Geoffroy Hautier group). I obtained my PhD in Nanomaterials science from Utrecht University (Ingmar Swart group). My cv can be found here.

In the same way that an astronaut is someone who explores outer space, I am a micronaut: someone who explores (E, x, y, z, ...)-space (and its Fourier or Taylor space counterparts). I do these explorations on surfaces and molecules using scanning probe microscopy and advanced (opto-electronic) hyperspectral analysis techniques. I am skilled at using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) to investigate these structures all the way down to their individual atoms and individual molecular (or crystal) orbitals.

I am particularly interested in introducing inhomogeneities (like defects, dopants or structural anomalies) in materials to elicit quantum effects that can be used for creating quantum sensors and qubits. My work focuses on the interplay of different dimensionalities, such as 0D defects inside 1D or 2D materials such as graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). I have a particular passion for efficiently folding in many dimensions of the high-dimensional parameter space (even beyond LDOS(E, x, y)) into our hyperspectral data acquisition (daq) on the fly using advanced techniques like intermodulation spectroscopy.

I support this research using ab initio calculations at the level of density functional theory (DFT), and extract phenomenology from these calculations using techniques like symmetry/orbital projecting, band unfolding, and setting up effective tight-binding and Hubbard models. This allows me to build intuition and heuristics that further accelerates our discovery of novel materials.

Beyond the experimental and theoretical physics, I am also a carbon architect: someone who loves to build interesting structures. My building blocks are atoms and the chemical bonds between them is my mortar. I use chemical reactions and bottom-up assembly or on-surface synthesis to create the structures that I am interested in.

I have been at the forefront of the development of techniques to improve the synthetic capabilities of carbon-based nanostructures. For example, I have pioneered matrix-assisted direct transfer, an important technique to bring polymers and macromolecules onto the surface and turn them into graphene nanoribbons, after they have been prepared by chemists. In addition, I have turned bottom-up fabricated nanomaterials into actual devices that function as real transistors, and I have made steps in making new kinds of structures with different electronic properties.

I operate on the conviction that we can leverage the control that chemistry provides in creating atomically precise structures to make novel materials with precisely engineered quantum properties. The resulting functional nanomaterials may be used as new platforms for quantum technologies and provide alternatives to solid-state materials. My ultimate hope is to contribute to novel materials that enable more (efficient) compute and less wasted power - an important topic in the era of skyrocketing demand for compute and AI-driven datacenter proliferation.

My work combines insights from synthetic organic chemistry, theoretical and experimental physics, surface science, nanoscience, electrical and mechanical engineering. As such, I fulfill a very interesting, interdisciplinary role in academia/industry, where I am particularly comfortable collaborating with chemists, theoretical and experimental physicist, engineers, contractors and tech companies. I am passionate about my interdisciplinary research, my role as collaborator and interpreter between all these different people and perspectives, and my role as someone who is pushing the boundaries of science and technology.

Allow me to list a few accomplishments that I am proud of. Among my scientific achievements are the fabrication of nanoporous graphene (transistors) as well as new types of electronically functional graphene nanoribbon heterostructures and quantum dots featuring strongly correlated (magnetically coupled) electron pairs. I have experimentally revealed the phenomenon of negative differential resistance in graphene nanoribbons. I have made and studied graphene nanoribbons with four-membered rings and five-membered rings, as well as magnetic nanoribbons and nanoribbon Kondo lattices. I am an expert on nitrogen doping in graphene nanoribbons, having synthesized several graphitic nitrogen-doped ribbons with funky electronic behavior. I have provided fundamental insights into the mechanisms of on-surface chemistry reactions through my work utilizing noncontact-AFM and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). I am an expert in graphene nanoribbon transport through my work on in-situ lifting/transport measurements and transport calculations. I have developed a software package in Mathematica for performing electronic structure calculations at the level of tight-binding/mean field Hubbard theory, called MathemaTB. I have developed new surface-synthesis techniques such as matrix-assisted direct (MAD) transfer, which vastly increased the scope of nanostructures accessible on surface. I have used MAD transfer in conjunction with protecting-group aided iterative synthesis (PAIS) to achieve, for the first time, the fabrication of fully monodisperse graphene nanoribbons with precisely predetermined length and monomer sequence. I have written the Python software Scanalyzer and Scantelligent, with the latter enabling us to perform complicated high-parameter space exploration using several laboratory devices in sync, and automating data acquisition.