General Overview:  The Wisconsin MRSEC is investigating innovative methods to incorporate a greatly expanded diversity of atom types into semiconductors, thus yielding materials with a new range of electronic properties.  Semiconductors are the foundation of modern electronic and photonic devices, and are widely used in technologies such as solar cells, LEDs, and microprocessors.  Incorporating new atom types into semiconductors will expand the range of semiconductor

Members of the UW MRSEC Interdisciplinary Education Group (IEG) collaborated with MRSEC researchers to develop a laboratory method that enables students to synthesize research quality graphene by CVD.  The method uses safe, inexpensive equipment and reagents so the synthesis can be performed in a high school classroom.  To date, the IEG has led the activity with six groups of middle and high school students during field trips at the University of Wisconsin Discovery Center.   A manuscript describing the protocol is

Simulations of a model for microtubule(MT)-based active nematics capture experimentally observed defect dynamics. The image on the right shows three sequential images from experimental system in which +½ and -½ defects are created through a bending stability and subsequently separate. The image on the left shows similar defect behaviors observed in dynamical simulations of a coarse grain model for the MTbased active nematics.

While conventional materials are assembled from inanimate building blocks, we are exploring the behavior of soft materials in which the constituent components consume energy and spontaneously coordinate their microscopic behavior and form novel materials such as active gels, crawling emulsion droplets, and living liquid crystals.

Electrons in epitaxial graphene nanoribbons travel unimpeded at high speed for large distances, so that they are ideally suited for graphene electronics. a)         b) 

Graduate students at Ohio State's Center for Emergent Materials (Andrew Berger, Michael Page, Shane White) developed a demo illustrating how a computer hard drive works. This demo has been used at several outreach events and in school efforts through the Scientific Thinkers program and is currently under discussion with the Museum of Science in Boston for duplication there.

LaAlO3 and SrTiO3 are two well known non‐magnetic insulators, but when LaAlO3 is deposited on SrTiO3 to form a clean LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interface, the interface becomes an ultra‐thin sheet of conductor. Even more surprisingly, the interface exhibits unusual magnetic properties, but the origin of the observed interfacial magnetism is under debate.

JEOL JEM-2800

Discovery: We have observed a large inverse spin-Hall effect (ISHE) in ZnO films grown using Pulsed Laser Deposition. This discovery provides an entirely new means of measuring spin currents in semiconductors. Approach: Developed a novel device concept for the injection and detection of spin-polarized carriers.

Epitaxial graphene may transform the computing and communications industry.