南科大物理学霸本科毕业就在顶级期刊发表论文

Recently, an undergraduate student named Lu Qiangsheng from the Physics Department of Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) made history by having his paper entitled “Unexpected Large Hole Effective Masses in SnSe Revealed by Angle Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy” published in the prestigious physics journal Physical Review Letters, also known as PRL. Lu is the first undergraduate student of SUSTech to ever receive such an honor.

Lu, together with the university’s physics post-doctorate Wu Minghui and assistant professor Wu Di, are the authors of the paper.

The paper was completed through collective efforts and was assembled under the collaboration of the department of physics and material science and engineering of Beihang University. An experiment on angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) was completed by Lu and his academic mentor Liu Chang. The first principle calculation of tin on a selenium band was completed by Wu Minghui and co-supervisor Huang Li. The transport model calculation was completed by Wu Di, an assistant professor in the department of physics and co-supervisor He Jiaqing and they explained the physical properties of tin selenide systems from the increase of the effective mass.

Lu made use of the SUSTech’s ARPES instrument to meticulously measure the band structure of the SnSe single crystal at different temperatures varying from 80-600 K. According to the results of the analysis, it seems that the effective masses of the holes in the system are larger than the theoretical values, and the lower the temperature the greater the effective masses. From this hypothesis combined with the single-band transport model, he found that the abnormal increase in the effective mass can quantitatively explain the electrical properties at the measured temperature. Therefore, the paper provides a new explanation of the electrical behavior of thermoelectric materials.

As huge as the news is for SUSTech, Lu’s teachers and classmates were not so surprised. In their eyes, Lu is a “scholar tyrant” who spends over 10 hours in the laboratory every day.

Lu had shown great talent in physics before he went to college. When he was at the High School Affiliated to Xi’an Jiaotong University, he participated in a number of physics contests. He and one of his classmates once gave a US$ 7,500 prize to his alma mater to set up an education foundation.

Lu had been studying at the University of Missouri in the United States from 2013 to July of this year. The experiment in this article was completed at the end of 2016. He also led a team of graduate and doctoral candidates to successfully debut a laser ARPES instrument purchased by Nanjing University, which has been well-received by its professors and students.

(Yang Mei)