Abstract: 
Discoveries and rediscoveries of “star” materials with exceptional functionalities have been the central theme of materials science and propelled the modern technologies in the past decades. In this talk, I will share our experiences and lessons learned while studying perovskite-structured materials including both transition-metal oxides and organic-inorganic halides. Oxides have rich phase diagrams and exotic physical properties due to the complex interactions between multiple degrees of freedoms. I will discuss the advantages and challenges of applying oxides like Mott insulators to photovoltaic devices. Light illumination was also used as additional parameter to store and read information in ferroelectric tunneling junctions. Another “hot” frontier is perovskite-structured hybrid metal halides, which can absorb light as a result of their band gap and transport carriers with negligible trapping. Using phototransistors, we provide direct evidence on the ambipolar transport in this important class of materials.

CV：
Dr. Tom Wu (吴韬) received his B.S. degree from Zhejiang University in 1995 and Ph.D. degree from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2002. Before joining King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Feb. 2013 as Associate Professor, he worked in Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. Dr. Wu has authored/ co-authored nearly 200 peer-reviewed papers in the areas of oxide thin films, heterostructures, nanomaterials, and hybrid materials, with a focus on their electronic, magnetic and optical functionalities. He also serves as Associate Editor for ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.