NQPI Seminar 10/22/2026 - Pengpeng Zhang

The Nanoscale and Quantum Phenomena Institute (NQPI) Seminar Series is pleased to welcome Pengpeng Zhang, Professor of Physics, Michigan State University, as our featured speaker on Thursday, October 22 at 4:10 p.m. All seminars take place in Walter 145 and are also accessible virtually via Teams. Title: Building and Probing Thin Films and Heterostructures of TMDs and Kagome Metals Abstract: Rapid advances in low-dimensional materials with diverse crystal symmetries and chemical compositions have opened new avenues for exploring novel physical phenomena and functionalities. Artificially stacking or stitching dissimilar materials via construction of heterostructures further offers unprecedent potential for tailoring the properties of individual constituent and giving rise to exotic quantum phenomena. In this talk, I will first discuss how we utilize lateral heterostructures to induce phase transformation in transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) core-shell architecture and to tailor the surface flat bands of a Kagome metal. I will then discuss emergent one-dimensional phenomena along atomic step edges in Kagome thin films, where reduced dimensionality and symmetry can give rise to unconventional electronic states.