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Program Highlights for year 2014

Nebraska MRSEC Professor/Student Pairs Programs

The Nebraska MRSEC Professor/Student Pairs Program brings in a professor and a student from non-research intensive four-year institutions to conduct research with Nebraska MRSEC scientists.

Hybrid Ferroelectric/Graphene Devices

Graphene is a two-dimensional material that consists of carbon atoms arranged in a h

Bulk Dirac Points in Distorted Spinels

The LRSM topological insulator (TI) seed is investigating how the connectivity of electronic bands in momentum space can be used to topologically classify insulators and semimetals. The theory of topological band structures has been generalized beyond TIs to include topological semimetals, including Weyl semimetals, Dirac semimetals and other symmetry protected topological states.

Living Smectics are sensitive to boundary Elasticity

‘Living Smectics’ are being studied by a Physics PhD

Summer Enrichment Program for High School Students, PSSI

The LRSM has organized a free, four week summer program for local high school students interested in materials science and engineering since 1993. Typically 24-28 students, usually juniors but occasionally well qualified sophomores, are accepted. Students are drawn from schools in the Delaware Valley within easy commuting distance of the LRSM.

Panel Discussion on Entrepreneurship, CTT and LRSM

This year, we collaborated with Penn’s Center for Technology Transfer (CTT) on a discussion panel "How to Start a Materials-based Company." CTT is in charge of transferring inventions and innovative knowledge to outside organizations for the benefit of society. The panel, geared mainly towards graduate students, focused on starting a materials science based company.

In Situ Repair of Nanocrystal Devices

Semiconductor nanocrystals are sensitive to air and solvents, which hinders wet-chemical processing under ambient conditions.

This problem has limited the scaling of nanocrystal device dimensions and large-scale device integration achievable by  conventional processing.

Phonons & Soft Spots in Two-dimensional Glasses and Crystals

The mechanical failure of amorphous systems is not well understood, but recent work by Liu and co-workers suggests that low-frequency vibrational modes are concentrated in localized regions, or “soft spots,” that are prone to rearrange.

Anisotropic Particles Toughen Disordered Packings

Disordered nanoparticle assemblies constitute an important class of materials that have numerous applications in energy conversion and storage, electronics, photonics, and sensing. Unfortunately, however, such assemblies tend to fracture and abrade under small loads, significantly limiting their widespread use.

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