Highlights

A group led by Ong and Cava (Princeton) has reported the observation of phase transitions involving the Dirac electrons in bismuth. By monitoring the spins of the Dirac electrons, they observed sharp jumps of the magnetization MT in high magnetic field H […]

In a normal material, electrons repel each other due to their charge. In the copper-oxide superconductors, however, an attractive force develops between electrons that pairs them up at temperatures up to 140 degrees above absolute zero. […]

While electronics have become much smaller and more powerful, an elusive goal has been to “print” these tiny devices rapidly over very large areas.

PCCM is partnering with the Cornell, Northwestern, and MIT MRSECs to create an innovative new online collaborative research community of REU students across the country in the NSF-sponsored NSDL MatDL “Soft Matter Wiki” pilot program of the Materials Digital Library (MatDL), part of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) project.

Materials Camps for teachers, plus PCCM’s Princeton University Materials Academy (P.U.M.A.) and Research Experience for Teachers (RET) programs, have resulted in a for-credit materials science curriculum in local high schools.

Surfactant adsorption at solid-liquid interfaces is important in many industrial processes, including corrosion inhibition, dispersion stabilization, and lubrication. Furthermore, surfactant adsorption may provide novel and exciting means to guide soft materials to self-assemble into a myriad of tailored shapes. Recently, PCCM researchers have made a breakthrough in elucidating the physical mechanisms behind surfactant self-assembly on […]

While many approaches have been developed over the years to transfer patterns onto flat surfaces, faithfully transferring patterns onto curves substrates remains a major obstacle to the development of large-area electronics. Recently, PCCM researchers have successfully patterned domed polyester substrates with metal stripes (gold, silver, etc.).

Electronic transport through a junction formed between silicon (Si), a monolayer of alkyl chains (C₁₄H₂₉) self-assembled on Si, and a metal (M) is dominated by thermionic emission above the semiconductor barrier and tunneling through the insulating molecular layer [1]. This team of PCCM and Weizmann investigators recently showed [2] that exposing the alkyl monolayers to electron irradiation induces new states between the occupied and unoccupied states of the pristine alkyl chain, evidently through the creation of C=C double bonds and C-C crosslinks since the overall layer density is unaffected.