Lina Quan

Assistant Professor

Novel Materials, Ultrafast Spectroscopy, Optoelectronic Devices

Our research focuses on the optical and electronic properties of emerging semiconductor such as perovskites, to control the absorption or emission of light and/or manipulate the transport and recombination of energized charge carriers in these materials. We employ a number of cutting edge characterization techniques (ultrafast lasers, synchrotron x-ray) to study the photophysics of materials and devices with high spatial and temporal resolutions. Our work finds a number of applications including light harvesting (photovoltaics, photo- and X-Ray- detectors) and light emission (LEDs, lasers) devices.

We develop and synthesize new semiconductor materials, and characterize them using a modern toolbox of materials chemistry: X-Ray and electron diffraction, solid-state NMR, electron microscopy and optical spectroscopies. A particularly unique aspect is the development of multimodal techniques to interrelate a series of different measurements to provide connections between the materials, chemical, physical, optical, morphological and structural properties – where possible on the same local scan area. Recent work has focused on pushing new nano-structured emitters further into the blue spectral region, and molecular modulation/passivation protocols for different bandgap bulk halide perovskites to increase their performance and long-term device stability.

A precise understanding of the physical principles governing the structural and electronic dynamics in electronic materials is necessary to generate insights that are subsequently fed to the development of next generation energy efficient devices. We investigate the interaction of light with matter, using light absorption or photoluminescence (PL) techniques to access key information about optoelectronic properties in materials and devices. To better inform synthetic efforts, and understand the critical roles of heterogeneity, interfaces, and disorder, we investigate the materials using various excitation sources such as ultrafast lasers. We perform a number of techniques including time-resolved photoluminescence and transient absorption across a range of time scales relevant to carrier recombination and device operation.

Lina Quan is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry. She received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea where she worked with Dong Ha Kim. During her Ph.D., she worked with Edward Sargent from the University of Toronto, (2014-2016). After receiving her doctorate in 2016, she continued work as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto then at the University of California, Berkeley with Peidong Yang.