The presence of isolated defects in the lattice of large band-gap semiconductors can introduce colored centers, by altering their electronic properties giving rise to transitions within the visible region. Diamond has a rigid and dense lattice preventing defect diffusion and phase transitions under high pressure and temperature settings.
The CDCM Arts+Sciences Collaboratory Residence Program is educating MRSEC students, post-docs and faculty about the ways in which contemporary artists are using and developing advanced technologies.
Researchers at the University of Texas - Austin find that manipulating biological electron transport pathways may be a general strategy for allowing bacteria to produce or communicate with synthetic materials.
Researchers at the University of Texas - Austin have discovered a new method to separate valley index using a designed metasurface. Excitons that carry different valley index are routed toward different directions in real space and momentum space, and photons emitted go to different directions according to their helicity.
The CEM Internal Advisory Council, a grassroots committee of students and postdoctoral researchers, created POEM to inform the Center’s direction and improve the educational and research experiences of CEM students.
Many advanced drugs acting in cells are made of DNA fragments. Since DNA is biologically active and destroyed if not recognized, a major challenge for this kind of medicine is getting the DNA into selected target cells. SMRC researchers have found that soap-like molecules that form nanometer-size spherical particles in water and that have a DNA-like component as part of their molecular structure can act as effective carriers of therapeutic DNA for cancer treatment.
Simple bent molecules like CB7CB perform some seemingly miraculous tricks when packed together to make a liquid. Because the molecular ends and middles attract each other, the molecules spontaneously knit themselves together into double stranded chains many units long, like the twisted rope in the graphic. Understanding such self-assembly is key to creating new applications for soft materials like liquid crystals and polymers.
The DNA double helix is a universally familiar pairing of two polymer chains in water, joined into a duplex by the selective binding of side group bases, the sequence of which contains and transmits genetic information.
The Princeton MRSEC has leveraged the low disorder and long coherence of states in a pristine silicon crystal to experimentally realize the Tavis-Cummings model, a fundamental model in quantum optics.
