Aligned liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are soft materials that exhibit reversible actuation akin to human muscles when thermally cycled above their nematic-to-isotropic transition temperature. The MRSEC team at Harvard University studied the effects of LCE ink composition, nozzle geometry, and printing parameters on director alignment.
The Harvard MRSEC engages K-12 teachers and students through the science of everyday materials. Led by former HS teacher Strangfeld, the MRSEC hosts workshops for teachers and K-12 students that are modeled on the undergraduate Science and Cooking course developed by Weitz and Brenner, which is now led by Sörensen.
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.
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.
Electronic nematicity, the spontaneous breaking of crystalline rotational symmetry, has been discovered in several strongly correlated electronic systems, including high Tc superconductors. Recently, several studies have suggested that the charge density wave in the kagome superconductor CsV3Sb5 breaks rotational symmetry—an intriguing possibility, as it would be a rare example of “three-state Potts nematicity,” in which there are three possible orientations in a hexagonal lattice. Here, MRSEC researchers at the University of Washington report that CsV3Sb5 is probably not nematic, but it is very sensitive to isotropic strain.
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.
UTK-MRSEC The Center for Advanced Materials & Manufacturing partnered with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to host the inaugural "Neutron Day," an event designed to deepen collaboration and foster interdisciplinary research connections.
The recent Quantum Materials and Machine Learning Workshop brought together 22 invited speakers and in total 50 graduate students, postdoc, faculty attendees from 18 different institutions for an intensive exploration of cutting-edge developments at the intersection of quantum physics, materials science, and machine learning. The program featured established researchers alongside three postdoctoral fellows, fostering meaningful dialogue between different career stages.
The CHARM team successfully used computational design to produce new, non-natural peptide molecules that self-assemble into discrete nanoparticles that are 2 nm in diameter and 4 nm in length. The new nanoparticles, examples of the class of protein structure call coiled coils, result in exciting new self-assembly behavior with potential to impact materials technology.
At the University of Delaware, CHARM’s FORGES program works alongside industry partners and several academic departments from UD’s College of Engineering and College of Arts & Science to bring local high school students a summer program wide variety of hands-on science activities.
