Seminar Speaker: Junqiao Wu, UC Berkeley

What One Material Can Do

Abstract

Vanadium dioxide undergoes a metal-insulator phase transition at 67 degrees C. The two phases differ drastically in electrical and optical/dielectric properties. Using this one material and its doped phases, we have uncovered new physics in correlated electron behavior and developed new applications ranging from regulation of thermal radiation to simulation of neural plasticity.

Biography

Professor Junqiao Wu received a B.S. from Fudan University and a M.S. from Peking University, China. He obtained a Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley for work on semiconductors. He did postdoctoral research at Harvard University on transition metal oxides. He began his faculty appointment in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley in 2006. His honors include the 29th Ross N. Tucker Memorial Award, the US-NSF Career Award, the US-DOE Early Career Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from the White House, the Bakar Prize, elected Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), and the FMD John Bardeen Award from the TMS. He is currently the Chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at UC Berkeley and holds a joint appointment at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He was also elected to the Chair Line of the Division of Materials Physics of the American Physical Society. The Wu group explores the physics and applications of functional materials and semiconductors. Prof. Wu has published over 300 widely cited papers in the field.