Shuyu Liu
Quantum materials form an indispensable branch of modern physics. My research involves the synthesis of nanomaterials, the manufacture of multiterminal devices, and modelling of the electrical behaviour of solid-state materials. We use Pulsed-Laser-Deposition (PLD) to synthesize epitaxial films of materials, which can be as thin as a single atomic layer. Clean-room facilities such as photolithography are employed to engineer oxide films into nanoelectronic devices. In my projects, pressure and chemical substitution are used to tune the Curie temperature of ferroelectrics to absolute zero. The resulting quantum phase transitions lead to the emergence of remarkable quantum fluctuations across wide regions of the phase diagram. Such fluctuations produce many unusual changes in thermodynamic and electrical quantities, which can be explored using cryogenic refrigerators. The high sensitivity of these properties to the external environment can be cleverly adopted in the design of quantum sensors. The latest findings of our group demonstrate that itinerant electrons can be doped or injected with ionic-liquid voltage gates into quantum ferroelectrics. This method allows us to observe strong electron-electron interactions in quantum ferroelectrics with low or intermediate carrier densities. This is an effective procedure for realizing unconventional superconductivity in quantum dielectric materials and devices.