Welcome to the Duan Lab webpage!

Using two-dimensional layered materials and their heterostructures, we are pushing the electronic and photonic devices towards the ultimate limit of single atomic layer, creating a new generation of devices with unprecedented performance, unique functions and/or extraordinary flexibility.

Combining chemical synthesis and physical assembly approaches, we are developing powerful strategies for the hetero-integration of multi-composition, multi-structure and multi-function at the nanoscale, and by doing so, creating a new generation of integrated materials and nanosystems with unprecedented performance or unique functions to break the boundaries of traditional technologies.

Through rational design and nanoscale eintegration of highly distinct materials and functions (e.g., light harvesting, charge transport, or catalytic capabilities), we are creating new material systems for highly efficient energy harvesting, conversion and storage.

With comparable size to functional biological building blocks, nanoscale systems are ideally suited for interfacing with biological systems. We are designing nanoscale electrical and optical systems that can greatly expand our capability in probing, imaging, monitoring, and manipulating biological processes with unprecedented resolution, sensitivity and precision.

News:

Professor Xiangfeng Duan’s recent Nature perspective article Featurered in EE|Times magazine
May 6, 2021
The Nature perspective article “Promises and Prospects of Two-dimensional Transistors” was published in the March 3, 2021 issue. The article highlights the exciting potential of the emerging 2D semiconductors for future transistor scaling, gives an in-depth analysis of the state-of-art research and the technical hurdles facing the community, and outlines the pathways to pushing the limit of 2D transistors and enabling the lab-to-fab transition.
Professor Duan is recognized as one of Clarivate Analytics' Highly Cited Researchers 2020
Dec 3, 2020
Four UCLA Chemistry & Biochemistry faculty have been named on the annual Highly Cited Researchers™ 2020 list from Clarivate, placing them among world’s most influential scholars, based on citations.
UCLA-Led Research Shows Efficient and Inexpensive Fuel-Cells in Sight
Dec 3, 2020
A team of UCLA, Caltech and Ford Motor Company researchers has improved fuel-cell technologies to exceed the U.S. Department of Energy targets in efficiency, stability and power. No other reported fuel cells have reached all these milestones simultaneously.
Programmable electronics based on the reversible doping of 2-D semiconductors
Nov 12, 2020
Researchers at University of California, Los Angeles, have recently devised an approach that could enable the development of programmable devices made of 2-D semiconductors. This approach, presented in the paper published in Nature Electronics, leverages a superionic phase transition in silver iodide to tailor the carrier type within devices made of WSe₂ via a process called switchable ionic doping.
Black phosphorus composite makes a better battery
Nov 12, 2020
A new electrode material could make it possible to construct lithium-ion batteries with a high charging rate and storage capacity. If scaled up, the anode material developed by researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) and colleagues in the US might be used to manufacture batteries with an energy density of more than 350 watt-hours per kilogram – enough for a typical electric vehicle (EV) to travel 600 miles on a single charge.