The UCSD MRSEC RIMSE Summer Schools prepare trainees to engage in research, in MRSEC labs and within UCSD at large. The program streamlines high school students, undergraduate students (with a particular focus on transfer students), REU students, and incoming graduate students into research programs in the domains covered by the two IRGs.
This work represents the first study to establish fluoride as a universal amorphizing agent in the indium oxide system, and by inference, may play a similar role in related oxide semiconductor materials.
Lattice defects play an important role in determining the optical and electrical properties of monolayer semiconductors such as MoS2. Although the structures of various defects in monolayer MoS2 are well studied, little is known about the properties of the fluorescent defect species and their interaction with molecular adsorbates.
The Harvard MRSEC provides a vibrant culture of entrepreneurship and several recent Ph.D. students supported by Center IRGs and seed projects have co-founded new companies.
A team at the Harvard MRSEC led by Bertoldi and Aizenberg has developed an approach to achieve a diverse trajectories from a single-material system via self-regulation: when a photoresponsive liquid crystal elastomeric pillar with mesogen alignment is exposed to light, it ‘dances’ dynamically as light initiates a traveling order-to-disorder transition front that twists and bends via opto-chemo-mechanical feedback.
UD CHARM and Princeton’s PCCM coordinated with the Chicago MRSEC to host three virtual events (Soft Matter for All, Rising Stars, and a Professional Development Workshop) to highlight early career, high-impact research and ignite discussion for graduate students and postdocs pursuing academic and non-academic career paths.
Experimental studies combined with theoretical calculations of spin dynamics across a wide frequency range from ~10 GHz to several THz in a novel amorphous ferromagnet (FM)/3D topological insulator (TI) (FeGaB/BiSb) system that is scalable and provides a promising platform for spin-electronic devices.
Producing self-assembled structures of prescribed limited size and shape is a major challenge in nanoscience. A major achievement of the MRSEC was to elucidate a new chirality-based mechanism that leads to self-limiting assembly of colloidal rafts.
Here, three IRG2 PP developed a combination of experiments with 3D active fluids confined in microfluidic channels and a minimal hydrodynamic model to show that size of the channel determines the emergent lengthscale of the growing deformations. These findings will advance our understanding of active nemato-hydrodynamics and the pathways to 3D active turbulence at low Reynolds number.
Animal tissues are composed of cells attached to either the surface of a fibrous network called a basement membrane or embedded within a 3D extracellular or interstitial matrix. As the disease liver fibrosis progresses, the extracellular fibrous networks become denser and more aligned. These physical changes lead to different mechanical properties and structures to which cells are exquisitely sensitive. To better understand the pathological effects of these changes during fibrosis on cells, we have engineered material platforms that mimic the extracellular matrix in tissue health and disease. As an example, we have fabricated fibrous materials that have varied mechanical properties and fiber densities when mechanically loaded due to the chemical adhesion between fibers, similar to natural extracellular matrix (see Figure).
