Event
MSE Seminar: Dr. Jeremy T. Robinson, US Naval Research Laboratory
Wednesday, April 8, 2026
3:30 p.m.
Room 2110 Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Building
Sherri Tatum
301-405-5240
statum12@umd.edu
"Engineering Layered Materials"
Abstract: Two-dimensional (2D) layered materials provide a versatile platform in which electronic, mechanical, and optical properties can be tuned through controlled manipulation of structure, chemistry, and environment. The promise of these materials lies in their unique properties, which are dominated by surface and interface effects. In this talk I will give an overview of some of our R&D activities at the Naval Research Laboratory in studying and manipulating layered 2D materials for potential applications ranging from sensing to opto-acoustic platforms. The underlying scientific focus includes graphene-based systems and transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) and how interfaces, disorder, and external environments are primary design variables that govern behavior and can be used to transform materials into functional systems. The work is guided by three overarching themes: chemical and structural tuning, interlayer and interface coupling, and the engineering of photon–phonon interactions in 2D acoustic cavities.
References:
Reduced graphene oxide molecular sensors. Nano Letters, 8, 3137, (2008). https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/nl8013007
Wafer-scale reduced graphene oxide films for nanomechanical devices. Nano Letters, 8, 3441, (2008). https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/nl8023092
Properties of fluorinated graphene films. Nano Letters, 10, 3001 (2010). https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/nl101437p
Evidence for interlayer coupling and moiré periodic potentials in twisted bilayer graphene. PRL, 109, 186807, (2012). https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.186807
Electronic hybridization of large-area stacked graphene films. ACS Nano, 7, 637 (2013). https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/nn304834p
Enabling remote quantum emission in 2D semiconductors via porous metallic networks. Nat. Comm. 11, 5 (2020). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13857-0
Engineering of nanoscale heterogeneous transition metal dichalcogenide–au interfaces. Nano Lett. 23, 2792 (2023). https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c00080
Acoustic cavities in 2D heterostructures., Nature Communications 12, 3267 (2021). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23359-7
Tunable Exciton-Driven Photoelasticity in 2D Material Acoustic Cavities. ACS Nano 19, 10058 (2025). https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.4c16757
Bio: Jeremy Robinson is a senior staff scientist in the Electronic Sciences and Technology Division at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). He earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from Towson University (2002), his PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from UC Berkeley (2007), and he was a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at NRL. He was recognized with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) and the Sigma Xi Young Investigator Award for his continuing research on 2D layered materials, at the intersection of materials synthesis, interface engineering and device integration.
