Prize Talk: David Adler Lectureship Award in Materials Physics Epitaxially engineered semiconductor heterostructures for spintronics

The epitaxial synthesis of quantum materials and their heterostructures has been influential in advancing the frontiers of condensed matter physics by enabling the discovery of diverse emergent phenomena [1]. Spin states in semiconductor quantum structures have played an important role in this context by revealing phenomena such as long lived electron spin coherence that persist even at technologically relevant temperatures; these provide a pathway toward ''semiconductor spintronics" [2]. This talk will give a bird's eye view (albeit biased) of epitaxially engineered materials for semiconductor spintronics over the past 3 decades, starting with early studies of spin-engineering in magnetic semiconductor heterostructures [3,4] and ending with the contemporary exploration of spin-charge conversion in topological insulator (narrow band gap semiconductor) heterostructures [5].