Yuan Cao (SGY Class of 2010) published 2 articles in the same issue of Nature for a second time

On May 6, Yuan Cao (SGY ‘10), currently a Ph.D. student at MIT, published 2 articles in Nature on the same day, introducing his latest breakthroughs made in researches into the magic-angle of graphene. Cao is the first co-author of the first article and first author & co-corresponding-author of the second one.

In the first article, the researchers asserted that the magic angle of twisted bilayer graphene should be generalizable to other two-dimensional systems, controlling the intensity of electron-electron interactions by controlling the twisting angle. They reported a brand new system of twisted graphene: small-angle twisted bilayer-bilayer graphene, (TBBG).

In the second article, the researchers focused on the distribution of the local twist angles.

Using magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene encapsulated in hexagonal boron nitride, they scanned the material using a nanoscale tip-scanning superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID-on-tip) to obtain tomographic images of the Landau levels in the quantum Hall state, and mapped local variations in the twist angle with precision better than 0.002 degrees, and a special resolution of a few moiré periods.

Yuan Cao, was admitted to the School of the Gifted Youth of USTC in 2010 and became a member of Jici Yan Special Physics Class. He was awarded with the prestigious “Guo Moruo Scholarship” during his undergraduate years in USTC. Believe it or not, May 6^th is actually the second day on which Cao has published two Nature articles: this amazing feat was first accomplished on March 5, 2018. In his PhD research, Cao has found that a magic superconductivity effect appears between two layers of graphene when they are arranged in a small angle of 1.1°. The discovery was a great surprise to researchers around the globe and immediately became a new hotspot in Condensed Matter Physics. In honor of his discoveries, Cao topped Nature's Top 10 most influential people in science! In 2018, Yuan Cao, at the age of 22, was listed in Forbes China’s 30 under 30 in Science, being the youngest among the elites. Clearly Yuan Cao has a bright future ahead of him, and we warmly anticipate his future accomplishments. Well done Yuan!!