Alex McLeod

Alexander McLeod
Assistant Professor, School of Physics and AstronomyContact
Physics And Nanotechnology Building Room 354 115 Union St. SeMinneapolis, MN 55455
Affiliations
Education
Doctor of Philosophy in Physics with honors, University of California San Diego, 2017
Bachelors of Arts in Physics and Astrophysics cum laude, University of California Berkeley, 2009
Professional Background
Columbia Nano Initiative Director’s Fellow, Columbia University, Dept. of Physics, 2020
Graduate Student Researcher, University of California San Diego, Dept. of Physics, 2017
Assistant Optical Engineer, Bruker Nano-Surfaces Division, 2013
Site Lead: Network for Computational Nanotechnology, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Molecular Foundry, 2010
My research interests include studying phase transitions in quantum matter and the opto-electronics of next-generation 2-dimensional materials including graphene, dichalcogenide semiconductors, and van der Waals heterostructures. To accomplish these investigations, I devise, construct, and and apply novel nano-optical imaging and spectroscopy instruments for measurements at low temperature and under controlled environments. Moreover, I develop flexible theoretical and analysis frameworks to draw quantitative results from experimental data.
Honors and Awards
Co-Investigator on NASA Award – Laboratory Analysis of Returned Samples, Contamination-free & non-destructive nano-spectroscopy of aqueous alteration products in returned samples, 2019-2022
Research Project, Nano-optics of strained correlated electron oxides
Research Project, Low-temperature polaritonics and opto-electronics of two-dimensional materials
Research Project, Theory and interpretation of near-field optical microscopy
Instrument Development, Design and operation of a cryogenic scanning near-field optical microscope.
Doctoral Thesis, Quantitative Near-Field Spectroscopy of Heterogeneous and Correlated Electron Oxides
Selected Publications
- Alexander S. McLeod. Quantitative Near-Field Microscopy of Heterogeneous and Correlated Electron Oxides. PhD thesis, UC San Diego, 2017.
- Suheng Xu and Alexander S. McLeod and Xinzhong Chen and Daniel J. Rizzo and Bjarke S. Jessen and Ziheng Yao and Zhiyuan Sun and Sara Shabani and Abhay N. Pasupathy and Andrew J. Millis and Cory R. Dean and James C. Hone and Mengkun Liu and D. N. Basov, Deep learning analysis of polaritonic waves images, (2021) arXiv: 2108.07222
- Dong, Y. and Xiong, L. and Phinney, I. Y. and Sun, Z. and Jing, R. and McLeod, A. S. and Zhang, S. and Liu, S. and Ruta, F. L. and Gao, H. and et al., Fizeau drag in graphene plasmonics, Nature 594 (2021), 513–516
- A. S. McLeod*, J. Zhang*, M. G. Gu, F. Jin, G. Zhang, K. W. Post, X. G. Zhao, A. J. Millis, W. Wu, J. M. Rondinelli, R. D. Averitt, and D. N. Basov. Multi-messenger nano-probes of hidden magnetism in a strained manganite. Nature Materials, 2019.
- G.X. Ni*, A.S. McLeod*, Z. Sun, L. Wang, L. Xiong, K.W. Post, S.S. Sunku, B.-Y. Jiang, J. Hone, C.R. Dean, M.M. Fogler, and D.N. Basov. Fundamental limits to graphene plasmonics. Nature, 557(7706), 2018. ISSN 14764687. doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0136-9. *These authors contributed equally to the present work
- K.W. Post*, A.S. McLeod*, M. Hepting, M. Bluschke, Y. Wang, G. Cristiani, G. Logvenov, A. Charnukha, G.X. Ni, P. Radhakrishnan, M. Minola, A. Pasupathy, A.V. Boris, E. Benckiser, K.A. Dahmen, E.W. Carlson, B. Keimer, and D.N. Basov. Coexisting first- and second-order electronic phase transitions in a correlated oxide. Nature Physics, 14:1056–1061, 2018. ISSN 17452481. doi: 10.1038/s41567-018-0201-1. *These authors contributed equally to the present work.
- A.S. McLeod, E. Van Heumen, J.G. Ramirez, S. Wang, T. Saerbeck, S. Guenon, M. Goldflam, L. Anderegg, P. Kelly, A. Mueller, M.K. Liu, I.K. Schuller, and D.N. Basov. Nanotextured phase coexistence in the correlated insulator V2O3. Nature Physics, 13(1), 2017. ISSN 17452481. doi: 10.1038/nphys3882.
- J. Zhang*, A.S. McLeod*, Q. Han, X. Chen, H. A. Bechtel, Z. Yao, S. N. Gilbert Corder, T. Ciavatti, T. H. Tao, M. Aronson, G. L. Carr, M. C. Martin, C. Sow, S. Yonezawa, F. Nakamura, I. Terasaki, D. N. Basov, A. J. Millis, Y. Maeno, and M. K. Liu. Nano-Resolved Current-Induced Insulator-Metal Transition in the Mott Insulator Ca2RuO4. Phys. Rev. X, 9:011032, Feb 2019. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevX.9.011032. *These authors contributed equally to the present work.
- A.S. McLeod*, I.T. Lucas*, J.S. Syzdek, D.S. Middlemiss, C.P. Grey, D.N. Basov, and R. Kostecki. IR near-field spectroscopy and imaging of single LixFePO4 microcrystals. Nano Letters, 15(1), 2015. ISSN 15306992. doi: 10.1021/nl5010898. *These authors contributed equally to the present work.
- A.S. McLeod*, G. Dominguez*, Z. Gainsforth, P. Kelly, H.A. Bechtel, F. Keilmann, A. Westphal, M. Thiemens, and D.N. Basov. Nanoscale infrared spectroscopy as a non-destructive probe of extraterrestrial samples. Nature Communications, 5, 2014. ISSN 20411723. doi: 10.1038/ncomms6445. *These authors contributed equally to the present work.
- A.S. McLeod, P. Kelly, M.D. Goldflam, Z. Gainsforth, A.J. Westphal, G. Dominguez, M.H. Thiemens, M.M. Fogler, and D.N. Basov. Model for quantitative tip-enhanced spectroscopy and the extraction of nanoscale-resolved optical constants. Physical Review B, 90(8), 2014. ISSN 1550235X. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevB.90.085136.A. Pustogow*, A. S. McLeod*, Y. Saito, D. N. Basov, and M. Dressel. Internal strain tunes electronic correlations on the nanoscale. Science Advances, 4(12), 2018. *These authors contributed equally to the present work.