Dr Zhen Zhan will develop a new self-consistent method by combining tight-binding model with a tight binding propagation method (TBPM) in their home-made simulator, named TBPLaS. An advantage of this new method is that the computational cost is linearly dependent on the size of the system. Therefore, it can extend the self-consistent calculations to systems containing millions of atoms. Furthermore, Dr Zhan will consider the lattice relaxation effects, which are relevant in the exploration of novel properties of vdW heterostructures.

Dr Zhan will investigate the novel properties and explain the microscopic mechanics of correlated properties of vdW heterostructures discovered in experiments.

MEET DR ZHEN ZHAN

The collaboration with researchers in IMDEA Nanociencia will increase more the feasibility of his research proposal, which will be a significant breakthrough to their home-made simulator named TBPLaS. More importantly, by working with researchers in IMDEA Nanociencia, she would like to gain professional skills for the development of continuum models and deep understanding of superconductivity and strongly correlated properties of two-dimensional materials.

With this, she hopes to make important contributions to explain the phenomena appearing in the two dimensional world due to twistronics. IMDEA Nanociencia is a national and international institute, and has a dynamical research environment. In a long term, by working there, Dr Zhan will gain more experience on working with people with different backgrounds and from different countries. All these will ensure her to be an independent researcher after the fellowship. With a secondment in groups at the Massachussets Institute of Technology, USA, she woulds like to gain experimental experience related to the superconductivity of two dimensional heterostructures.