About

Welcome to Nanophysics and Nanoelectronics group homepage at UCF. The group was established in 2005 under the leadership of Dr. Saiful Khondaker. The group is interested in understanding the electrical, magnetic and optical properties of low dimensional nano-structured materials for device applications. Our current interest is in layered Quantum Materials with exotic properties, 2D TMDCs, graphene, and heterostructures. In the past, we worked on carbon nanotubes, and organic semiconductors. Our group expertise includes (i) mechanical exfoliation, large area exfoliation and chemical vapor deposition for synthesizing the materials, (ii) confocal and tip enhanced Raman spectroscopy and other associated scanning-probe based techniques for characterization, (iii) Fabrication of devices using state of the art nanoscale patterning and lithography techniques, and (iv) measurement of charge transport properties in field effect transistor geometry at room temperature and low temperatures.

Dr. Saiful Khondaker is a professor of Nanotechnology, Physics, and Electrical Engineering and Interim Assistant Vice President for Research Advancement at the University of Central Florida (UCF). He is also the director for NSF PREM Center for Ultrafast Dynamics and Catalysis in Emerging Materials at UCF. Khondaker received his Ph.D. in 1999 from the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge. He then went to the University of Texas at Austin to work as a postdoctoral fellow, and then as an assistant director at the center for nano and molecular science and technology. He joined UCF in 2005 as a tenure track assistant professor, was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2010, and full professor in 2017. He served as the Nanotechnology MS program director at UCF between 2019 – 2023. He was appointed as the inaugural office of research faculty fellow in 2019, where he brought a valuable faculty perspective to research administration and spearheaded a junior faculty mentoring program aimed at increasing grant success. Khondaker was appointed as the Interim Assistant VP for Research in 2023. Khondaker published over 100 journal articles with ~11000 citation and an H-index of 42. He is a recipient of prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award, multiple UCF research incentive (RIA) awards, UCF teching (TIP) award, JSPS invitational fellowship, and US Airforce Summer Fellowship.