News

February 2025

  • Gabriel Schebel has been admitted to the University of Colorado physics Ph.D. program. Congratulations, Gabe!
  • The DoE project updates:  Field-Tailoring Science and Technology for Novel Materials Synthesis:

We have just built a vacuum chamber and its frame (picture below), which are key components of the instrument.  The vacuum chamber is to house a molten zone, a magnet, etc.

 

FTT

 

December 2024

Dhruva Anantha Datta has just joined our group. Welcome Dhruva! A graduate student, Dhruva once led development of advanced GEO satellite payloads and CubeSat systems. His unique expertise and strong work ethic will help strengthen our effort in search of novel quantum phases/materials. 

August 2024

Our new project entitled "Field-Tailoring Science and Technology for Novel Materials Synthesis" has been funded by DoE. 

This project is to advance the science and technology of materials fabrication in magnetic fields via magneto-synthesis.  The project consists of two parts:  1. We will develop an innovative Field-Tailoring Technology (FTT) that utilizes a laser molten/floating zone furnace coupled with a superconducting magnet to synthesize materials that are inaccessible via existing techniques.  2.  We will establish a novel program of research to advance our fundamental understanding of the key processes and mechanisms of magneto-synthesis. 

August 2024

 Yu Zhang will work as a postdoc at the Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), joining his fellow alumni Dr. Hao Zheng and Dr. Hengdi Zhao who joined the ANL earlier.  Congratulations, Dr. Yu Zhang! 

August 12-13, 2024

Workshop on Loop Current in Quantum Materials 2024

April 2024

Yu Zhang successfully passed his PhD defense. Congratulations, Dr. Zhang!

December 2023

Yifei Ni successfully passed his PhD defense. Congratulations, Dr. Ni !

November 2023

Prof. Gang Cao serves as the first Chair of the Executive Committee for the newly established APS Topical Group on Quantum Materials Synthesis (GQMS)

Feburary 2023

The 2023 Boulder Workshop on Quantum Materials Synthesis will be held at University of Colorado Boulder in July 26-29, 2023. It is sponsored by the National Science Foundation and University of Colorado Boulder. 

January, 2023

After completing his extraordinarily sucessful PhD research (with 20 publications), Dr. Hengdi Zhao will take a postition at Argonne National Laboratory as a postdoc in March 2023. 

November 2022

PhysicsWorld publishes a story on our recent work.

Hengdi Zhao successfully passed his PhD defense. Congratulations, Dr. Zhao!

October 2022

Our recent discovery is highlighted in CU Boulder Today:

Physicists probe ‘astonishing’ morphing properties of honeycomb-like material

August 2022

Our most recent paper entitled Control of chiral orbital currents in a colossal magnetoresistance material is published in Nature 611, 467–472 (2022)  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05262-3

This work demonstrats current-control of chiral-orbital-current-enabled colossal magnetoresistance and offers a new paradigm for quantum technologies. 

April 2022

Prof. Cao’s single-investigator grant from the NSF Division of Materials Research was renewed in April 2022 for four full years. This award marks 20 years of the NSF continuous support of Prof. Cao's individual research program started in 2002.