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Several MRL Faculty members were honored this summer and early fall for achievements in and significant contributions to their respective fields. The Millennium Prize Foundation of Finland announced that Professor Shuji Nakamura, who is involved with MRL's IRG-2 project on Oxide Based Semiconductors, is the sole winner of the 2006 Millennium Technology Prize, accompanied by one million euros (about $1.3 million in U.S. dollars).

In a human body, phospholipids form all kinds of different membranes and self-arrange into different objects. Some form unstable tubes. Such tubes in water may serve as templates for making nanotubes which may store drugs or other chemicals, or may suck up other species.

Europium-doped yttrium oxide (Eu-Y2O3) luminescent films have been produced directly from a solution precursor using a radio frequency (RF) plasma spray technique. Highly crystalline and luminescent films were grown on Si (100) and steel substrates by this process. X-ray diffraction analyses on these films confirm that polycrystalline cubic Y2O3 phase has formed in-situ with no impurity phases.

    May 2009 marked the University of Maryland MRSEC’s 12th Annual Middle School Student Science Conference, co-hosted by the American Institute of Physics.

Vinayak P. Dravid, Northwestern University IRG1, Synergistic Linear and Nonlinear Phenomena in Multifunctional Oxide Ceramic Systems

Based on the similarity of the sequences of combinatorially selected peptides that have similar binding characteristics, we developed a bioinformatics approach that provides a general and simple methodology to quantitatively categorize a large number of inorganic binding peptides. The approach also provides a way to knowledge-based design a new set of binding sequences specific to inorganic surfaces with predictable functionalities. De novo designed peptides can then be expressed using genetic tools, such as redisplay, to assess the efficacy of the design via binding affinity evaluation.

Teacher Workshop: Eighteen elementary school teachers participated in summer workshop. Student impact of approximately 200 students.  Summer Camp: Instruction for a summer camp for forty-two dyslexic students. Intervention provided opportunity to experience success in science. 

Center researchers have found liquid crystal phases in systems of circular or spherical particles, a surprise since liquid crystals usually appear in molecules shaped like sticks or plates. The trick is to give hard particles (purple) a soft repulsive "halo" (green) The resulting phase behavior is extraordinarily rich, including "lyotropic" liquid crystal phases and a variety of complex modulated crystal phases.