The emergence of two-dimensional (2D) materials, which are only one atom or one structural unit cell thick, has stimulated an enormous range of research effort. The well-known example is graphene – a zero band gap semiconductor, which exhibits outstanding charge carrier mobility. However, the absence of a band gap is a major hindrance in implementing graphene in 2D electronics.
On April 8, 2017, PCCM held its first Día de la Ciencia at the Princeton Public Library. Forty scientists set up 20 table presentations and met with over 500 members of the community.
The Imaging and Analysis Center (IAC) supported by PCCM is a world-leading facility for materials characterization. It is a critical resource to our industrial user community. The advanced instrumentation and expertise in the IAC provide ultimate opportunity for us to actively interact with industrial scientists.
On April 1, 2017 over 500 people visited Princeton University to learn about polymers from Princeton Center for Complex Materials researchers. Members of the NSF funded MRSEC in Interdisciplinary Research Group 2 presented a multimedia demonstration and lecture featuring audience participation.
Color centers in diamond are a promising platform for quantum information science, as they can serve as solid state quantum bits with efficient optical transitions.
The spin degree of freedom for donor nuclei in silicon have exceptionally long coherence times making them useful as either quantum bits (qubits) or long-lived quantum memories. Nuclear spins are hard to control in nanoscale devices since they are thought to only be coherently manipulated using magnetic fields, which are hard to confine.
Block copolymers, which self-assemble into nanostructures due to the incompatibility of each block, have generated intense scientific interest and are used in a myriad of important technologies. In such systems, the majority of the macromolecules can lie within a few nanometers of an internal interface, within a region where the dynamics and mechanical properties can be highly modified from th
We exploited Matrix Assited Pulsed Laser Evaporation (MAPLE) to deposit polyethylene from a quasi-vapor phase at a controlled substrate temperature, to crystallize polymers under confinement at a wide range of target crystallization temperature, Tc. The team showed the remarkable controllability of the semi-crystalline structure of PE by MAPLE with the control of substrate temp.; see Figure A
Interactions among electrons can give rise to a variety of exotic quantum phases in solids. An intriguing example is the formation of “nematic” electronic states, whose wave functions break the rotational symmetry of the host material.
Electrons in topological materials behave like massless particles (called Weyl fermions). They are either right- or left-handed (the spins are locked parallel or antiparallel to their velocity). In parallel applied electric and magnetic fields, one population grows while the other shrinks. This leads to a new kind of electrical current called an “axial” current.
