DaVonne Henry – Hesse Endowment Scholar
1st Year Scholar, PhD candidate
Physics
Georgetown University

Research: 
Combining single-molecule magnets (SMMs) with graphene nanodevices can lead to high-density data storage or quantum computing applications. Using nanofabrication techniques, I create highly responsive devices that can be used to perform measurements on SMMs. Electrical measurements and computational models are used to assess the performance of these devices and determine their working principles.

How Will Your Research Benefit Society?
To improve from the current state-of-the-art high-density magnetic data storage, novel solutions are needed to reduce the data storage device size while maintaining data integrity. Single-molecule magnets have the potential to greatly improve data storage density. This research involves electrical measurements and computational models to investigate the fundamental questions related to how these molecules can decrease storage device size.

How will an ARCS Award Benefit Your Research?
For accurate determination of the carrier density in graphene, and for measurements of devices tuned near the fermi level, I will need a setup that allows me to perform careful gate-dependent conductivity measurements inside the cryostat. This award will support the acquisition of instruments needed for these measurements.

Career objectives:
I hope to continue researching novel technologies for information processing that can meet the world’s increasing demands in an energy-efficient manner. Additionally, through outreach and mentoring, I want to support a new generation of diverse scientists.

Community Service:
In the summer of 2020, I helped to found an organization within Georgetown Physics called Physicists Against Racism, which encourages faculty and students to consider how bias affects society and the scientific community.