Event
MSE Seminar: Dr. Paola Barbara, GU
Wednesday, February 25, 2026
3:30 p.m.
Room 2110 Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Building
Sherri Tatum
301-405-5240
statum12@umd.edu
“Epitaxial Graphene on SiC for Floquet engineering and Spintronics”
Abstract: Epitaxial growth of graphene on SiC provides wafer-scale, high-quality graphene, with opportunities for scalable electronic applications. Here, I will outline two projects that use epitaxial graphene on SiC as a promising platform: 1) the fabrication of gated devices for Floquet engineering of graphene, to drive graphene into non-equilibrium topological states by light irradiation1,2 and 2) the fabrication of graphene quantum dots3,4 for molecular spintronics devices, yielding an electrical read-out of the magnetic state of single molecule magnets.5
References:
1 Liu, Y. et al. Signatures of Floquet electronic steady states in graphene under continuous-wave mid-infrared irradiation. Nature communications 16, 2057 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-57335-2
2 Liu, Y. et al. Gate-Assisted Programmable Molecular Doping of Epitaxial Graphene Devices. SMALL METHODS (2025). https://doi.org/10.1002/smtd.202501482
3 El Fatimy, A. et al. Epitaxial graphene quantum dots for high-performance terahertz bolometers. Nature Nanotechnology 11, 335-+ (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2015.303
4 El Fatimy, A. et al. Ultra-broadband photodetectors based on epitaxial graphene quantum dots. Nanophotonics 7, 735-740 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1515/nanoph-2017-0100
5 Alqahtani, A. et al. Electrical detection of magnetization switching in single-molecule magnets. CARBON 248 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.carbon.2025.121093
We acknowledge support from NSF (projects DMR CMP #2104755, DMR CMP #2104770, and OSI #2329006
Biography: Paola Barbara is a physics professor and current physics department chair at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, USA. She is also an editor for the journal Carbon. Her research interests include quantum transport and superconductivity, as well as novel nanoscale devices based on atomically thin materials, ranging from chemical sensors to detectors and sources of electromagnetic radiation. She received her M. S. degree (Laurea in Fisica) at the University of Salerno, Italy, and her Ph. D. in Physics at the Technical University of Denmark, in Lyngby, Denmark. Prior to joining the faculty at Georgetown University in 2000, she worked at the Center for Superconductivity Research (now Quantum Materials Center) at the University of Maryland.
