Manuel Suárez receives the 2025 GEFES Award for Best Experimental Thesis

Suárez’s thesis, titled “Non-linear Transport in Chiral Tellurium: From Fundamentals to Applications”, explores how the lack of inversion symmetry in certain materials can give rise to unconventional electronic responses that go beyond Ohm’s law. His research provides new insights into the relationship between crystal symmetry and functional electronic behavior, with potential impact on quantum materials, spintronics, and energy-harvesting technologies. 

A thesis that rewrites the rules of electronics

Manuel Suárez’s doctoral work focused on non-linear electronic transport—a regime in which current and voltage no longer scale proportionally. These non-linear effects emerge in materials whose atomic structures lack inversion symmetry, bridging the gap between fundamental crystal symetry and functional electronic responses. 

His research centered on tellurium, a semiconductor with a helical atomic structure, a property known as chirality. Such chirality means that the material exists in either a “left-handed” or “right-handed” form, and this distinction turns out to be crucial for its electrical behavior. 

To explore how this structural handedness dictates electrical behavior, Suárez designed and fabricated nanoscale devices, performing ultra-sensitive transport measurements at cryogenic temperatures. 

The main outcomes of the thesis show that Tellurium generates non-linear electrical responses both in the presence and absence of magnetic fields, allowing new ways to probe emergent quantum phenomena; that under magnetic fields these effects enable control of the spin polarization of electrical currents, making Tellurium a highly promising material for next-generation spintronic applications; and that without magnetic fields the material can rectify radiofrequency waves, opening the possibility of extremely compact devices capable of harvesting ambient electromagnetic energy. Together, these results highlight the strong link between crystal symmetry and unconventional transport and demonstrate the potential of chiral semiconductors for future technologies. 

About Manuel Suárez Rodríguez 

Manuel Suárez Rodríguez is a physicist specializing in the interface between nanofabrication and electronic transport. He completed dual BSc degrees in Physics and Chemistry with honors at the University of Santiago de Compostela (2020), followed by an MSc in Nanoscience at the University of the Basque Country (2021). In 2025, he earned his PhD in Physics of Nanostructures at CIC nanoGUNE, receiving cum laude honors and the International Mention. His doctoral research was supported by a “la Caixa” INPhINIT fellowship and included a research stay at Princeton University with Professor Leslie Schoop. 

During his time at nanoGUNE, he initiated the group’s research line on non-linear transport in non-centrosymmetric systems, leading to first-author publications in journals such as Nature Materials, Physical Review Letters, and Advanced Materials. He also contributes to the scientific community as a reviewer for Nature Communications.

Suárez currently applies his expertise in electronic transport as a Quantum Engineer at Quantum Motion.