Northwestern University IRG-1 has identified novel protein building blocks that form high-aspect ratio structures with genetic-level programmability and tunability. By understanding the biophysics underlying such structural forms, IRG-1 is using these building blocks as key active components in tunable matrix materials such that the material can be mechanically strengthened or weakened upon the addition of a stimulus that impacts these interactions.

2D materials offer the opportunity for continued device scaling while avoiding the short-channel effects that hinder bulk semiconductors. Due to their high surface areas, chemical modification is a powerful strategy for tuning the electronic properties of 2D semiconductors, although their dangling-bond-free surfaces present challenges to stable, uniform covalent functionalization. Northwestern University MRSEC IRG-2 has overcome these challenges by electrophilically trifluoromethylating 2D semiconducting WSe2 and MoS2 using the reagent trifluoromethyl thianthrenium triflate.

Magnetic materials are vital in technologies from spintronics to biomedicine. Coupling magnetism with optical responses broadens their utility to sensing, magneto-optical memory, and optical isolation.  Chromium chalcogenide spinels display particularly rich magnetism and magneto-optical properties. Colloidal nanocrystals offer routes to solution-processing, heterointegration, and property modulation through size, shape, or heterostructure control, but many chalcogenide spinels have never been synthesized at the nanoscale, and little control over size or morphology has been demonstrated.