Under the supervision of Associate Professor Haifeng Li, 2022 PhD graduate Yinghao Zhu from the Institute of Applied Physics and Materials Engineering (IAPME) at the University of Macau has achieved remarkable results. During his Ph.D. studies, his primary research areas included the single crystal growth, structural and physical property analysis of rare earth-transition metal oxides, as well as the investigation of their magnetic ground states and excitation behaviours using neutron scattering techniques. After obtaining his Ph.D. in Applied Physics and Materials Engineering from the University of Macau, he pursued postdoctoral research at the Department of Physics, Fudan University.
In 2023, Yinghao Zhu applied for and received funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under the Young Scientists Fund.
In 2024, Yinghao Zhu was awarded the prestigious Maria Skłodowska Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship. Subsequently, he will join the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum in Munich, Germany, to conduct research related to neutron scattering in condensed matter. The Maria Skłodowska Curie Fellowship is established by the European Union and supported by the Horizon 2020 Project, making it one of the most competitive and prestigious talent programs in Europe.
Recently, under the guidance of his postdoctoral advisor, Professor Jun Zhao from the Department of Physics at Fudan University, Yinghao Zhu and his team published a research paper titled “Superconductivity in pressurized trilayer La4Ni3O10-δ single crystals” in Nature. Nickel oxide superconductors are a newly discovered third class of high-temperature superconductors, following copper oxide and iron-based superconductors. In this study, he and his team successfully grew high-quality single crystal samples of La4Ni3O10, used neutron scattering techniques to analyse the oxygen occupancy information of the samples, and for the first time reported pressure-induced superconductivity in nickel oxide single crystals with a trilayer NiO2 structure, confirming the bulk superconductivity of nickel oxides.
IAPME’s Ph.D. program integrates various disciplines of science and engineering, consistently focusing on cutting-edge scientific research issues. It aims to equip students with the necessary interdisciplinary knowledge to achieve potential breakthroughs in new materials and manufacturing technologies in the future.
