About Me

I am a postdoc fellow at Princeton University. I obtained my Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University in March 2019. I work in the field of experimental condensed matter physics. In particular, I am interested in probing emergent quantum phenomena using transport and STM techniques. Check out more about my research below or on my google scholar.

Besides physics and engineering, I am quite into photograhpy, you can find some pitures I took in the Gallery. I also love making things when I have the chances, Some of my favorite works are shown below as well as on How to Make (Almost) Anything.

Research:
Quantum transport in 2D material heterostructure

My current research interest is quantum transport in 2D materials, esp. graphene. We make nano devices and look for exotic properties (like superfluidity, which things move without friction) under extremly low temperture (as low as 20mK) and high magnetic field (as high as 45T), regimes that are governed by quantum mechanics.

Making

Making is my hobby, I have done multiple projects of designing and building in the Harvard machine shop and the famous MIT course: How to Make (Almost) Anything. Some of my signature works are shown below.

Press fit car

On the left is a press and fit car made from cardboard. I modeled the car in Fusion360 and laser cut all the pieces. The wheels of the car can freely rotate. See more detail Here.

Casted personal stamp

This is a casted metal (Bithmuth-Tin alloy) stamp. The side of the stamp is the shape of a horse, my Chinese zodiac. The pattern on the bottom is my name in traditional Chinese charactors.

The fabrication process started with machining wax in a CNC mill. And three part rubber molds are casted into the machined wax to make a negtive mold. The the three part rubber molds are then carefully fit togther for metal pouring.

iPhone camera stablizer

This is a DIY active feedback iPhone gimbal. It senses the vibration of the device with 3axis gyroscope/ accelerometer. ATmega328 microcontrollers read the sensor, and control the three brushless motors to compensate for the movement with PID feedback. Everything including the body, electronics and coding are designed and made by me. Click here to view it in action as well as design and fabrication processes.

Features:

  • Reduce camera shake in all directions by 20-30dB.
  • Joystick to control pan and tilt.
  • Rechargable 5V battery inside (~2hours battery life).
  • Magnetic mount allows easy attach and detach.
  • Hyperlapse mode: rotate camera slowly for more interesting time lapse video.

Major challenges:

  • Precise control of brushless motor (< 0.1deg achieved).
  • Balancing the phone by adjust the parameters of the frame to reduce the required torque.
  • Optimizing the sensor reading interval, feedback parameters to eliminate self-starting oscillations.

Steam engine

This model steam engine runs on compressed air. When compressed air feed into the inlet, it pushes a piston to drive the aluminum fly wheel. The body and piston are machined from plexiglass so the inside machanism is visible.

All the parts are machined by mill or lathe with high accuracy. The fitting between the piston and the cylinder have to be perfect. If the gap is too large, the gas will leak out, and if the gap is too small the piston cannot move freely. Checkout this video to see live action.

Hackintosh build

My first PC build from individual parts, dual boots Windows 10 and MacOX. It has been running stable for more than a year and survived two moves.

Major problems trouble shoot:

  • CPU overheat: water pump doesn't turn on due to wrong temperature sensor used for feedback. Also heat sink didn't making good contact with CPU in the beginning.
  • SSD not detected (MacOS): new ssd need to be erased in terminal before shows up in disk utility.
  • Black screen after switching to dedicated graphics card: graphic card initially only output on displayport.