Women in Science and Engineering at Yale (2020 Edition)

Diana Qiu, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, School of Engineering & Applied Science,
Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

Diana Qiu is interested in the discovery and design of novel, highly-tunable and transient materials, as well as the exploration of fundamental processes, such as exciton transport and coherence and nonlinear and ultrafast optical response in materials relevant to fields such as optoelectronics, quantum information, and energy research.

Charge density induced by a point charge in encapsulated black phosphorus: Two-dimensional (2D) materials, which are only a few atoms thick, have proven to be a fruitful platform for developing nanoscale devices and exploring physics in low dimensions, but their tiny size means that they are exceptionally sensitive to their surrounding environment. Here, monolayer black phosphorus, a 2D material, is stabilized by being sandwiched between layers of sapphire (bottom) and boron nitride (top). The polarizability of these surrounding layers will influence the interactions of electrons inside the black phosphorus layer, as illustrated by the change in the charge density (red and blue isosurfaces) in the surrounding layers induced by the test charge (x) in the black phosphorus. This induced charge will, in turn, interact with the electrons in the black phosphorus, changing its electronic and optical properties. This principle opens new pathways for engineering the properties of a material by changing the external environment. Photo credit: Diana Qiu