Solid State & Optics Seminar
sponsored by “The Flint Fund Series on Quantum Devices and Nanostructures”
Prof. Kenneth Burch, Boston College
Wednesday, March 29th at 1:00PM
Location: TBD
Quantum Materials For Biosensing and Nanodevices
Quantum materials provide responses and states of matter with no classical analogs. As such, they offer opportunities to create an array of platforms for future devices crucial to human health, energy efficiency, communications, and imaging. In this talk, I will discuss using graphene for biosensing and a Mott Insulator to control the Nanoscale charge. Using the relativistic electrons in graphene, we have developed a new platform for multiplexed, rapid, easy-to-use detectors of biological analytes. I will discuss the unique aspects of graphene involved resulting in our demonstration of the detection of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, decease biomarkers in saliva, opioids in wastewater, and respiratory infection at clinically relevant levels. Time permitting, I will discuss how we can control the charge on the nanoscale in 2D materials towards novel states of matter and devices. In particular, we discovered modulation doping in 2D materials via the relativistic Mott Insulator RuCl3.
Bio:
Kenneth Burch is a Professor of Physics at Boston College. Before arriving at BC, he was an assistant professor at the U. of Toronto for 5 years. He is a former Director’s fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he performed ultrafast spectroscopy with A. Taylor, and was a graduate student of D. Basov studying the optical properties of quantum materials at UCSD. He has made seminal contributions to understanding and exploiting quantum materials. This includes discovering the Axial Higgs Mode, the Colossal Bulk Photovoltaic effect, modulation doping in 2D materials, and cutting-edge biosensors. His group also developed a cleanroom in a glovebox where all fabrication and heterostructure preparation is performed. Dr. Burch is an APS fellow, received the Lee-Asheroff-Riuchardson Prize, and the APS GMAG best dissertation award. He has 95 publications in high-impact journals, including Nature, Advanced Materials, Nature Materials, Nano Letters, ACS Nano, Physical Review X, Biosensors and Bioelectronics, multiple patents, and is supported by NIH, NSF, DOE, ONR, AFOSR, ARO, BARDA, GRIP molecular and GINER Inc.