Raj Kumar, a graduate student in the Advanced Magnetic Materials Research Group of Professor Frank Hunte, was awarded first prize at the recent 73rd Physical Electronics Conference 2013 hosted locally by the Department of Physics at North Carolina State University.
Raj’s poster presented preliminary results of ongoing research on Bi2Se3 topological insulators (TI). Topological insulators are a recently discovered class of electronic materials which exhibit a bulk band gap along with conducting topological surface states (TSS) which are protected from impurities by scattering by spin-momentum coupling of the carriers at the surface. Topological insulators are potentially useful materials for the future generation of spintronic and quantum computing devices. This research shows promise of effectively reducing the contribution of the bulk material to the overall transport properties in relation to the surface states of TIs. This work was done in collaboration with Joan Redwing at Pennsylvania State University and Daniel Dougherty in the Department of Physics at NCSU.
In recognition of this work, Raj was awarded a prize of $200 and a certificate by a committee comprised of the renowned scientists in the areas of Solid State Physics and Materials Science. The Physical Electronics Conference is held annually as a forum for the presentation of new results from research at the frontier of physics and chemistry of surfaces and interfaces.
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