Nitin Samarth is Verne M. Willaman Professor of Physics and Professor of Materials Science & Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. He has pioneered the molecular beam epitaxy of diverse families of spin-based quantum materials, launching two research areas of contemporary importance: semiconductor quantum spintronics and topological spintronics. He received his undergraduate degree in physics from IIT Bombay (India) and his Ph.D. in physics from Purdue University. Samarth is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the APS and AAAS. His other honors include the APS Adler Lectureship Award, Penn State’s Faculty Scholar Medal in the Physical Sciences and George Atherton Excellence in Teaching Award, and Outstanding Alumnus Awards from Purdue University and IIT Bombay. He has served on the elected chair-line of the APS Division of Materials Physics and currently serves on the chair-line of the APS Global Summit.
Presentation Title:
Epitaxially engineered hybrid materials for quantum technologies
Presentation Abstract:
The synthesis of complex epitaxial quantum materials allows the exploration of emergent phenomena arising from the interplay between factors such as electron-electron correlations, broken symmetry, spin-orbit coupling, electron-phonon coupling, and topological order. This provides exciting opportunities for engineering quantum materials that can be potentially exploited for quantum technologies, including quantum computing, quantum sensing, and quantum communications. We provide an overview of a program centered on the epitaxial synthesis of hybrid quantum materials that interface superconductivity, magnetism, and quantum states with an eye on applications in quantum technologies. We first discuss pathways for epitaxial engineering of semiconductors wherein superconducting Josephson junction qubits can be integrated with quantum defect spin qubits [1]. This approach exploits the emergence of superconductivity in heavily B-doped epitaxial diamond films grown by microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition with superconducting transition temperature around 3 K. Transport measurements of these superconducting films reveal signatures of an emergent hidden anisotropic order [2], a fundamental understanding of which may be important for exploiting superconducting diamond for quantum technologies. We then focus on emergent superconductivity in van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures grown by molecular beam epitaxy. These epitaxial heterostructures reveal a surprising concurrence of superconductivity, ferromagnetism, and topological states [3,4], providing attractive wafer-scale vdW platforms for developing non-reciprocal devices for superconducting electronics and, potentially, serving as topological quantum computation platforms.
Supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science National Quantum Information Science Research Centers (Q-NEXT) and by the National Science Foundation through grant nos. DMR-2039351 [Penn State 2DCC-MIP], DMR-2407130, and DMR-2011839 [Penn State Center for Nanoscale Science/MRSEC].
- Dwivedi et al., “Boron-doped diamond: a superconducting semiconductor for hybrid quantum integration,” (under review).
- Dwivedi et al., “Emergent anisotropic three-phase order in critically doped superconducting diamond films,” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 123, e2607730123 (2026).
- Yi et al., “Interface-induced superconductivity in magnetic topological insulators,” Science 383, 634-639 (2024).
- Islam et al., “Emergent superconductivity and non-reciprocal transport in a van der Waals Dirac semimetal/antiferromagnet heterostructure,” arXiv: 2504.20393.