Over 100 Types of Single Crystals Grown from Crystal Growth Laboratory at National Cheng Kung University, a Global Rarity; Four Papers Published in Nature Series Journals in a Single Year, Remarkable Achievements
Written by NCKU NSTC.Image credit to NCKU News Center.
To study and develop advanced crystalline materials, the ability to grow single crystals is essential. With funding from the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), the Crystal Growth Laboratory at the Department of Physics, National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), led by distinguished Professor Chin Shan Lue, has made remarkable accomplishment after more than a decade of effort. Through growing high-quality single crystals and collaborating with over 80 research groups from both domestically and abroad, the laboratory achieved marvelous success. In just the past year alone, four papers on crystalline material research were published in top-tier "Nature" series journals, marking a tremendous achievement.
Professor Chin Shan Lue (right) and Dr. Chia-Nung Kuo, a crystal growth expert, have provided single crystals from the laboratory to over 80 research teams both domestically and abroad. Last year, four research papers on crystalline materials were published in top-tier "Nature" series journals, achieving tremendous success.
In academia, publishing a paper in a Nature series journal often takes years of work and considerable resources, with only a handful of teams managing to do so. However, Professor Lue's group was able to publish four such papers in a single year, an accomplishment unmatched by most research groups in Taiwan.
Professor Lue stated that to promote the domestic research level of crystalline materials and strengthen the international competitiveness of new material development, the NSTC initiated the "Emergent Crystalline Materials Project" in 2012, bringing together local experts to establish a crystalline material research platform "Taiwan Consortium of Emergent Crystalline Materials" (TCECM), of which NCKU’s crystal growth laboratory is a vital part. Over the years, not only have they achieved fruitful results in academic research, but they have also extended to applications. With the concept of "Materials@Taiwan", they have developed a greater number of novel single crystals in Taiwan, providing emergent materials for both academia and industry.
Professor Lue stated that to promote the domestic research level of crystalline materials and strengthen the international competitiveness of new material development.
Professor Lue emphasized that the crystal growth technology is crucial for the development of advanced materials. Major countries with strong industrial and academic capabilities, such as the United States, Germany, Japan, and China, have large permanent institutions dedicated to the crystal growth. In the past, researchers in Taiwan had to rely on these institutions for crystals or purchase them from abroad, which restricted their research progress and caused them to miss opportunities. This is precisely why the establishment of the TCECM was both necessary and urgent.
He mentioned that through the efforts of Dr. Chia-Nung Kuo, a crystal growth expert, the crystal growth laboratory at NCKU has successfully grown more than 100 different types of high-quality single crystals. This remarkable achievement is very rare even among the global renowned crystal growth laboratories, as most laboratories concentrate on synthesizing only two or three kinds of crystals. As a result, NCKU has been able to collaborate with numerous domestic and international research teams and produce fruitful results, with over 20 foreign research institutions currently involved in these collaborations.
The two-dimensional material crystals grown in the NCKU Crystal Growth Laboratory can be repeatedly exfoliated with tape to form monolayer crystalline materials.
In just the past year, four crystalline material related papers were published in Nature series journals. One of them, in collaboration with a group from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), involved high-quality two-dimensional semiconductor platinum disulfide (PtS2) single crystals provided by NCKU for validating a breakthrough technique in transferring the van der Waals materials onto substrates. The results were published in Nature Electronics.
Professor Lue addressed that the remaining three papers were collaborations with domestic teams, including one with Professor Meng-Fan Luo (former director of Natural Sciences and Sustainable Development of NSTC) at National Central University, where NCKU provided platinum ditelluride (PtTe2) single crystals for the investigation of methanol decomposition, an important issue about the renewable energy. The other two papers were the results of collaborations with Professor Chih-Wei Luo’s ultrafast optics group at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University and Dr. Ming-Wen Chu’s electron microscopy group at Center for Condensed Matter Sciences of National Taiwan University. Both focused on the study of the dynamics and effective mass of the unique charge density wave compound of copper telluride (CuTe) also provided by NCKU. These papers were all published in Nature Communications.
The NCKU Crystal Growth Laboratory, funded by the NSTC’s priority project of "Taiwan Consortium of Emergent Crystalline Materials", has successfully grown over 100 types of high-quality single crystals, a rare achievement among global renowned crystal growth laboratories.
Dr. Chia-Nung Kuo explained that while natural mineral crystals take thousands or even millions of years to form, growing crystals in the laboratory requires adjusting various parameters and designing different crystal growth methods. Each process may take several days or even months, and often dozens of attempts are needed to successfully grow a single crystal. Such a work requires tremendous patience and perseverance. However, when the grown crystals contribute to yielding great research results from collaborators, all the effort is worthwhile. Only with low-defect, high-purity crystals, the intrinsic physical properties of materials can be obtained, enabling the validation of experimental results and theoretical predictions.
Dr. Kuo also expressed his curiosity, often trying to grow crystals never attempted before. For example, the crystal growth laboratory at NCKU was the first in the world to successfully grow single crystals of gold-tin compound (AuSn4), a material with exotic superconducting properties, and topological semimetals such as Pt3Te4 and NiTeSe, which are promising for catalytic applications.
The high-quality single crystals developed and grown in the NCKU Crystal Growth Laboratory are provided to over 20 international research institutions for various research topics.
Due to his long-standing dedication to crystalline material research and promotion, Professor Lue was awarded the "CTCI Outstanding Physics Research Award" at the Taiwan Physical Society Annual Meeting last year, recognizing his extraordinary contributions to connecting domestic and international collaborations of material-related research. Through these efforts, Professor Lue has published more than 80 papers in international journals during the past five years, with outstanding academic performance.
The Four Papers Published in Nature Series Journals:
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"Van der Waals device integration beyond the limits of van der Waals forces via adhesive matrix transfer", Nature Electronics 7, 17-28 (2024).
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"Investigating the role of under-coordinated Pt sites at the surface of layered PtTe2 for methanol decomposition", Nature Communications 15, 653 (2024).
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"Three-dimensional ultrafast charge-density-wave dynamics in CuTe", Nature Communications 15, 2386 (2024).
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"The growing charge-density wave order in CuTe lightens and speeds up electrons", Nature Communications 15, 9345 (2024).
Provider:
NCKU News Center
Date:
2025-02-21
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