Can Liu

Two-dimensional (2D) materials are core candidates for the next-generation electronic and optoelectronic materials, promising to revolutionize information technology. Can Liu is focused on addressing the key challenges hindering their practical application, including low material yield, limited crystal quality, and difficulties in on-demand structural customization.

For wafer-scale batch production of 2D materials, Can Liu and her collaborators have developed an interface element supply method that enables face-to-face modularized batch to produce 12-inch 2D semiconductor wafers. Furthermore, this research has entered the pilot production stage in collaboration with the Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory with active efforts to promote its industrialization.

For the high-quality preparation of 2D crystals, she and her collaborators innovatively proposed a new interfacial epitaxy paradigm. This approach overcomes the limitations of conventional surface growth, such as self-limited layer number, uncontrollable stacking order, and defect accumulation. Based on this method, high-quality 2D single crystals can be grown rapidly at a rate of 50 layers per minute. Additionally, it allows for the control of a unidirectional alignment for each layer, ensuring all layers are perfectly parallel and ultimately achieving a rhombohedral phase 2D crystal structure.

For the on-demand fabrication of low-dimensional structures, she and her collaborators have developed a novel interface coupling modulation fine structure approach. By utilizing the interaction at the interface between the crystal surface and its epitaxial substrate, they have achieved precise control over the universal epitaxy of zero-dimensional semiconductor quantum dots (with up to 20 quantum dot/substrate combinations), the identical manufacturing of one-dimensional semiconductor ribbon arrays, and the controlled fabrication of large-area 2D twisted bilayer graphene (with angular accuracy of 1° and centimeter-scale dimensions).