Abstract
Two-dimensional (2D) materials have garnered significant attention due to their exceptional physical properties and atomic-scale thickness, offering unique opportunities to explore new physics and enable next-generation electronic, photonic, and quantum devices. Ferroelectric materials, on the other hand, exhibit spontaneous polarization that can be reoriented by an external electric field, making them ideal for non-volatile memory applications. When integrated, ferroelectrics provide programmable, non-volatile doping to 2D materials, while the ultrathin nature of 2D layers allows for strong electrostatic control of the channel by the polarized ferroelectric layer. The synergy between ferroelectrics and 2D materials has led to a wide range of device innovations, including high-performance non-volatile memories, steep-slope transistors, programmable junctions, charge and pressure sensors, photodiodes, and smart optical filters. In this talk, I will present our research on nanoscale electronic and photonic devices based on ferroelectric and 2D materials, including reconfigurable logic devices, content-addressable memories, multifunctional components, ferroelectric classifiers, and ferroelectric synapses. These new material platforms and novel devices will have broad applications, ranging from data centers to robotics and sensor networks.
Biography
Wenjuan Zhu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received her Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Yale University in 2003. From 2003 to 2008, she worked as an Advisory Engineer/Scientist at the Semiconductor Research and Development Center (SRDC) at IBM, and from 2008 to 2014, she was a Research Staff Member at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. In 2014, she joined the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is a recipient of the AMD Jerry Sanders Faculty Scholar Award (2023), DARPA Young Faculty Award (2020), IBM Faculty Award (2018), and National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2017). Her current research interests include nanoscale electronic and optoelectronic devices based on two-dimensional materials and ferroelectric materials. Her research in the past has led to numerous publications and patents.