Ph. D. Fudan University, China, 1994

Postdoctoral Associate, National Renewable Energy Lab, Colorado (1995-1998);
Geophysical Lab, Carnegie Institution of Washington, DC (1999-2000).

Dr. Fu did his Ph.D. research under Professor Xie Xide and joined the University of Arkansas in 2002. His research interest is on the first-principles studies of bulks and nanomaterials. He is also interested in methodology, and recently initialized the study of nanoferroelectrics.

UNDERSTAND BULK AND NANOMATERIALS

Is there any way to discover new and innovative physics other than experiments and complex formulae? Yes, by first-principles solid state theories combined with original understanding of physics. Purpose of theoretical modeling is to acquire, by using computers as experimental tools, microscopic and fundamental understanding of physics that are often hard to achieve by pure observations. Computational physics has become increasingly powerful in discovering science, and has evolved into a new branch of physics (i.e., experimental, theoretical, and computational).

Then, what can first-principles solid state theory do? Nowadays the theory is such advanced that one needs very minimum information such as chemical species and atomic charges to predict a variety of materials properties. These properties include where atoms will be located, how chemical bonds are formed, how hard is the material, whether the material will be insulator or metal, what color the material will emit ...

What are we doing here? Three subjects:

• To understand how electrons behave in different materials,
• To study how materials interact with lights,
• To understand spontaneous polarization, electrical, electromechanical properties, and how materials interact with electric fields.

We are interested in the materials of technological relevance, which include

1. 1. Semiconductor bulk and nanomaterials, especially quantum dots, wires, and films. Applications include nanolasers, solar cells, single-electron transistors, nano mechanical devices, and DNA-sequence labeling.
2. 2. Bulk and nanoscale ferroelectrics and piezoelectrics, which are an unusual class of materials that can efficiently mechanical energy into electricity and vice versa. Applications include telecommunication, medical imaging, sonar listening devices, and military sensors. Recently we have initialized a new area of studying ferroelectric nanodots and nanowires.
3. 3. Organic/inorganic hybrid materials, which combine the advantages of polymers and semiconductors. By these novel materials, "plastic semiconductors" can be made, and new age of electronic devices is possible.

We also make effort in developing computational methods and codes targeted on new methods and new properties. Our current codes include (i) First-principles pseudopotential method with numerical atomic orbits and plane waves as bases, (ii) Berry's phase code within mixed-basis pseudopotential method to calculate polarization, and the constraint-force method to handle finite electric fields, (iii) First-principles derived screened pseudopotential method for studying large systems of thousands of atoms.