Highlights

Previously, UC Santa Barbara MRSEC researchers demonstrated that the introduction of charge to typically immiscible polymer blends can induce a microphase separation. Based on that work, the Random Phase Approximation (RPA) can be used with 13 input parameters to determine if a blend is microphase separated or homogeneous.

Conjugated polyelectrolytes can be used to form biosensors and bioelectronic devices. Controlling the optoelectronic properties of conjugated polyelectrolytes typically requires extensive synthetic modification.

Compensated ferrimagnets combine the advantages of ferromagnets and antiferromagnets: near-zero net magnetization reduces stray fields and enables fast, stable operation, while large exchange splitting allows a finite anomalous Hall effect (AHE) for electrical readout. In crystalline kagomé materials, nontrivial band structure and Berry curvature further enable strong intrinsic AHE, making them attractive for spintronic applications.

Controlling defects in wide‑bandgap nanomaterials is central to building scalable quantum systems. In this work, we demonstrated optically active and spin-bearing Yb3+ defects in CeO2 nanocrystals, establishing quantitative benchmarks for excited‑state optical lifetimes, spin‑lattice relaxation (T1), and spin coherence (Tm).

The Waltham High School Bilingual Chemistry Field Trip marked the fifth year of this MRSEC-supported outreach program and expanded its scope through the inclusion of AP Chemistry students and a new collaboration with the MEL Community Foundation. This year, 30 students from SEI and AP Chemistry courses, who had been engaged in bilingual chemistry learning throughout the academic year, visited Brandeis University for a culminating field trip featuring lab tours, hands-on chemistry experiments, and exposure to the research landscape in chemistry and materials science.

The Brandeis SciComm Lab expanded its impact beyond its home institution to serve the broader MRSEC community nationwide, providing science communication training through individual coaching, targeted workshops, and specialized programming. This year, the Lab delivered its Talk So People Will Listen workshop to the University of Texas at Austin MRSEC in a hybrid format, reaching 30 graduate students and researchers.

Going beyond the self-assembly of static structures necessitates the design, measurement, and control of the local flexibility of the building blocks as well as their assemblies. In this study, Rogers, Fraden,Grason, and Hagan demonstrated a method to infer the mechanical properties of multisubunitassemblies using cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM).

One specific objective of IRG2 is to design novel composite materials where both active and passive stresses are tunable by dispersing active building blocks in diverse passive soft materials. Here, Baskaran and Hagan performed simulations of 3D active nematics, inspired by experiments in which active polymers were dispersed in a passive colloidal liquid crystal by Duclos and Dogic.

A goal of IRG1 is to create economical design principles to target families of curved tubules with prescribed bend and writhe. In this study, Rogers, Fraden, Grason, and Hagan developed and implemented a design strategy to program the self-assembly of a complex spectrum of two-periodic curved crystals with variable periodicity, spatial dimension, and topology, spanning from toroids to achiral serpentine tubules to both left- and right-handed helical tubules.

Coarsening, the growth of larger structures at the expense of smaller ones, is a fundamental process in multiphase systems. Duclos and Rogers mixed phase-separating DNA nanostars in a reconstituted active fluid. This effort aligns with the goal of IRG2: designing active composite materials by dispersing active building blocks within diverse passive soft materials.