Physical AI with Quantum Materials
Adapting evolutionary knowledge from nature and the corresponding functional plasticity into the physical world may lead to paradigm shift in designing neuromorphic computing hardware; haptic interfaces for robots and reconfigurable metamatter. We are interested in exploring the use of correlated electron quantum semiconductors as model systems to design tunable electronic states and memory via learning and adaptation. Materials synthesis, discovery of new metastable phase change systems and understanding electronic structure of orbitally non-degenerate crystal lattices under various environmental stimuli form an important aspect of scholarship in this program. We also closely collaborate with experimental and computational neuroscientists to understand how cutting-edge knowledge from neuroscience research can guide adaptive semiconductor design.
Synthesis and physical properties of metastable semiconductors
Soft (i.e. fluidic, gel) interfaces offer non-thermal routes to design and discover metastable, electronically graded or transient functional materials. Understanding the thermodynamic (with condensed matter theorists) and kinetic (dynamical relaxation) aspects of these processes combined with in-situ probes (with DOE collaborators) is of interest. A fundamental problem is understanding glassy dynamics that manifests at such dissimilar interfaces and may be used to create spin glass-like quantum electronic analogs for neuromorphic information processing and memory.
Semiconductor Materials Synthesis in Extreme Environments
Experimental realization of synthetic neural processors and quantum metamatter require advances in semiconductor synthesis and test structures that allow interrogation of the intrinsic properties. Two problems in this regard are of particular interest in our group: (1) experimental techniques to advance crystalline materials synthesis via extreme thermodynamic environments and (2) methods to study phase formation in-operando in evolving environments. A significant part of this research is conducted in close collaboration with researchers at national laboratories.
