Speaker: Alberto Morpurgo, University of Geneva

Venue: Room W101, Physics Building

Abstract:The ability to exfoliate van der Waals crystals of magnetic compounds is giving access to a vast, unexplored family of two-dimensional magnetic materials, with a variety of different magnetic ground states. Most of these compounds are semiconductors that offer –besides the possibility to explore magnetism in highly controlled 2D crystals— a new playground to combine magnetic and semiconducting functionalities. In this talk I will discuss how magnetotransport experiments allow to investigate the magnetic phase diagrams of 2D magnetic materials down to the ultimate limit of individual monolayers, and to reveal phenomena that are difficult –or cannot—be accessed with other existing experimental techniques. After a short introduction, in my talk I will discuss very recent experiments on field effect transistors realized on exfoliated crystals of CrPS₄ –ranging from relatively thick multilayers, to double-gated bilayers, and to individual monolayers– and discuss results that illustrate the wealth of physical phenomena that become accessible with these systems.

Bio:Alberto Morpurgo is a condensed matter physicist, with a broad interest in the electronic properties of materials and devices. He received his PhD in 1998 from the University of Groningen (the Netherlands) for his thesis on mescocopic physics, for which he also received the Miedema Prize 1998 for the best Dutch PhD thesis. After a postdoctoral stay at Stanford University, Alberto Morpurgo moved to Delft University, where he became associate professor. In 2008, Alberto Morpurgo moved to University of Geneva, Switzerland, as full professor. The research of Prof. Morpurgo has covered a broad variety of material systems (III-V heterostructures, carbon nanotubes, superconductors, organic semiconductors, topological insulators) and physics problems (superconductivity, phase coherent transport, semiconductor physics, electron-electron interaction effects, magnetism etc.). Since the original discovery of graphene, Prof. Morpurgo has been working with increasing intensity in the field of 2D materials and heterostructures.