Zhi-Xun Shen
Zhi-Xun Shen is a Chinese-American experimental and solid state physicist who is a professor at Stanford University. He is particularly noted for his ARPES studies on high-temperature superconductors.
Life
Shen was born in July 1962 in Zhejiang, China. He graduated from Fudan University with a B.S. in 1983, and went to the United States through the CUSPEA program organized by T. D. Lee. He earned his M.S. degree in 1985 at Rutgers University. In 1989 he received a PhD in applied physics from Stanford University. In 1991 he became assistant professor, in 1996 associate professor, and in 2000 full professor at Stanford University. Since 2010 he is chief scientist at SLAC, and since 2006 he is founding director of the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences. Furthermore, from 2005 to 2008 he was director of the Geballe Laboratory for Advance Materials.Research
He developed several precision instruments, e.g. for synchrotron radiation sources, helium lamps for UV and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, and he used these to study high-temperature superconductors. For example, his group in 2010 obtained convincing evidence that the pseudogap phase of the cuprate high-temperature superconductors, which was discovered in the mid 1990s, indeed is an independent phase, which reaches into the superconducting phase. Besides ARPES techniques in the UV regime, he also employs x-ray diffraction methods.He developed near-field microwave microscopy based on atomic force microscopes for studies on mesoscopic length scales, e.g. nanostructured materials. Using this, he addresses applications such as new techniques for solar collectors.