2020-2021 Graduate Student Fellow
Previous Faculty Advisor: Professor Michael Crommie
Current Position: Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Santa Barbara
Canxun's research focused on investigating the electronic properties of graphene and/or transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) based moiré systems using scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy (STM/STS). Moiré superlattices are formed by stacking two layers of 2D materials with either a twist angle or a lattice mismatch. Driven by enhanced electron-electron interactions, novel quantum phases of matter such as Mott insulating states, superconductivity, nontrivial topology, and orbital ferromagnetism can emerge in such systems. Canxun utilized STM/STS to locally probe as well as manipulate the effects of correlation and topology in gate-tunable moiré systems. He used the STM tip to actively control the electronic structure of the sample and to characterize the emerging correlation physics. He also studied naturally occurring topological domain boundaries or intentionally created such domain boundaries in order to detect topologically protected interface modes.