Dr Irma Kuljanishvili

Irma Kuljanishvili is the Department Chair and an Associate Professor of Physics at Saint Louis University, USA. Her research interests are focused on novel approaches for design and characterization of advanced 1D and 2D nanomaterials and their applications in electronics, photonics, quantum science and medicine. She develops innovative methods to study selective synthesis of materials and interface engineering, which includes controlled growth and fabrication of atomically thin 2D nanomaterials, heterostructures, and 1D nanowires and carbon nanotubes. Irma’s research is highly interdisciplinary, bridging physics, materials science, chemistry and mechanics of interfaces. In her research she uses a variety of methods including advanced Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and spectroscopy techniques, AFM assisted lithography and patterning, optical methods such as Raman spectroscopy, PL and XPS methods, for materials interfaces and device studies. Scalable Chemical Vapor Deposition and mask free direct write fabrications techniques are used in Dr. Kuljanishvili's lab to identify more sustainable ways to produce new materials and study physics at the interface of the advanced multilayered systems. 

Recent AFM-related papers:

• McCormack K., Schaper N., Kim Y., Hensley D. K.,  Kravchenko I., Lavrik N. V., Gosztola D. J., Pantano M. F. & Kuljanishvili I. (2022) Enabling a novel approach to a controlled fabrication of 1D crystalline nanowires on suspended microstructures of arbitrary geometries using two direct-writing technologies Materials Today Nano 20 100241

• Schaper N., Alameri D., Kim Y., Thomas B., McCormack K., Chan M., Divan R., Gosztola D. J., Liu Y. & Kuljanishvili I. (2021) Controlled Fabrication of Quality ZnO NWs/CNTs and ZnO NWs/Gr Heterostructures via Direct Two-Step CVD Method Nanomaterials 11 1836

• Alameri D., Nasr J. R., Karbach D., Liu Y., Divan R., Saptarshi Das S. & Kuljanishvili I. (2019) Mask-free patterning and selective CVD growth of 2D-TMDCs semiconductors Semicond. Sci. Technol. 34 085010

• Dong R., Moore L., Aripova N., Williamson C., Schurz R., Liu Y., Ocolac L. E. & Kuljanishvili I. (2016) Bottom-up direct writing approach for controlled fabrication of WS2/MoS2 heterostructure systems RSC Advances 71

Biography: Irma received her PhD from Michigan State University in low temperature experimental condensed matter physics in 2005. Her PhD work was focused on Scanning Probe Microscopy and Spectroscopy studies of dopant molecules in semiconductor heterostructures. She continued her postdoctoral research at Harvard and Northwestern University from 2006-2011. She joined Saint Louis University, Department of Physics in 2011 and she is currently a tenured Associate Professor and Department Chairperson. She has published research papers in top ranked scientific journals Nature Physics, Materials Today Nano, Advanced Materials Interfaces, Nanoscale Advances, Small. Her work has been featured on covers of scientific journals, selected as Editor’s pick, and included in the collection of the most read popular articles.  She has two U.S patents (2020), and one patent application (2023).

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/irma-kuljanishvili-257bb77b/

Webpage: https://www.slu.edu/science-and-engineering/academics/physics/faculty/kuljanishvili-irma.php

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