Hui Zhao

I am a condensed matter experimentalist and my current research interests are semiconductor nano-electronics, nano-photonics and nano-spintronics studied by ultrafast laser techniques.

The Information technology (IT) is physically based on modern electronic technology. The integrated circuit (IC) technology is currently capable of fabricating almost one billion transistors on a small chip of silicon. The size of each transistor is well below 100 nanometers. Therefore, there is a pressing need to understand and utilize coherent and quantum properties of electrons in nano-electronic devices. The tiny size of current devices also raises serious questions about the future of electronic technology since further reduction of device size is extremely hard due to technical and fundamental limits. Extensive efforts have been made in developing new technologies including nano-photonics and nano-spintronics for the future of information technology.

My research is part of such efforts. We use ultrafast laser techniques to manipulate, control and detect electrons, including both charge and spin, in semiconductors and their nanostrutures. High resolution experimental techniques are developed, allowing us to study charge and spin dynamics with 100 femtosecond temporal resolution and spatial resolution as high as one nanometer. We are also interested in optical investigations of artificial photonic structures like photonic crystals and left-hand materials. More information can be found at my group website.