Dr. Samarth is Downsbrough Department Head and Professor of Physics at the Pennsylvania State University (PSU). From 1992-1998 he was Assistant Professor of Physics at PSU, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1998 and to Professor in 2001. He performed his post-doctoral research as a Research Associate and Assistant Faculty Fellow at the University of Notre Dame under Professor Jacek Furdyna (1986-1992). He received this Ph.D. in Physics from Purdue University, also under the direction of Professor Jacek Furdyna (1980-1986). He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a recipient of PSU’s Faculty Scholar Medal in the Physical Sciences and received an Outstanding Physics Alumnus Award from Purdue University. He currently serves on the elected chair-line of the Division of Materials Physics of the American Physical Society. Dr. Samarth has pioneered the epitaxial synthesis and nanopatterning of a variety of spin-based quantum materials [1], derived from both conventional and magnetic semiconductors and ferromagnetic metals, resulting in fundamental advances in semiconductor spintronics [2-5], frustrated magnetic arrays [6] and the application of topological insulators [7] to spintronics [8-11]. He has published 258 papers with about 10,900 citations and has an h-index of 52.

Selected Publications

1. N. Samarth, “Quantum materials from a synthesis perspective,” Nature Materials 16, 1068 (2017).

2. J. M. Kikkawa, I. P. Smorchkova, N. Samarth, and D. D. Awschalom, “Room-temperature spin memory in two-dimensional electron gases,” Science 277, 1284 (1997).

3. J. A. Gupta, R. Knobel, N. Samarth, and D. D. Awschalom, “Ultrafast manipulation of electron spin coherence,” Science 292, 2458 (2001).

4. I. Malajovich, J. J. Berry, N. Samarth, D. D. Awschalom, “Persistent sourcing of coherent spins for multifunctional semiconductor spintronics,” Nature 411, 770 (2001).

5. A. H. MacDonald, P. Schiffer and N. Samarth, “Ferromagnetic semiconductors: moving beyond (Ga,Mn)As,” Nature Materials 4, 195 (2005).

6. R. F. Wang et al., "Artificial 'spin ice' in a geometrically frustrated lattice of nanoscale ferromagnetic islands," Nature (London) 439, 303 (2006).

7. J. J. Heremans, R. J. Cava, N. Samarth, “Tetradymites as thermoelectrics and topological insulators,” Nature Reviews Materials 2, 17049 (2017). 

8. A. R. Mellnik et al., “Spin-transfer torque generated by a topological insulator,” Nature 511, 449 (2014). 

9. Hailong Wang et al., “Surface-State-Dominated Spin-Charge Current Conversion in Topological-Insulator-Ferromagnetic-Insulator Heterostructures,” Physical Review Letters 117, 076601 (2016). 

10. Jiahao Han et al., “Room-Temperature Spin-Orbit Torque Switching Induced by a Topological Insulator,” Physical Review Letters 119, 077702 (2017). 

11. “Unidirectional spin-Hall and Rashba-Edelstein magnetoresistance in topological insulator-ferromagnet layer heterostructures,” Yang Lv et al., Nature Communications 9, 111 (2018).