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Polyurethanes have many properties that qualify them as high performance polymeric materials, but they still suffer from mechanical damage. We report the development of polyurethane networks that exhibit self-repairing characteristics upon exposure to ultraviolet light. The network consists of an oxetane-substituted chitosan precursor incorporated into a two-component polyurethane. Upon mechanical damage of the network, four-member oxetane rings open to create two reactive ends.

A collaboration between the CMU MRSEC and Sandia National Laboratory has permitted the first large scale comparison between experimentally measured grain boundary energies and energies calculated based on atomistic simulations. The techniques for the measurement (at CMU) and the calculations (Sandia) are unique to each institution and largest experimental and theoretical data sets currently available. The favorable comparison validates the methods.

The Ismagilov and Mrksich groups at the University of Chicago MRSEC have recently established that a microfluidic system utilized in conjunction with surface immobilization chemistries can be used to pattern surfaces with well-defined gradients of adhesion molecules for the attachment of cells.

BASF, a major international chemical company headquartered in Germany, has established a major research initiative at Harvard, the BASF Advanced Research Initiative, that will provide up to $4M

The MRSEC Education Directors conducted a workshop at Princeton (September 14-17, 2008), chaired by PCCM's Dr. Dan Steinberg. The group collectively produced one logic model for each of the 6 E/O concentration areas.The MRSEC Education Directors conducted a workshop at Princeton (September 14-17, 2008), chaired by PCCM's Dr.

Quantum materials have the potential to revolutionize technologies ranging from sensing to telecommunication and computation. However, advancement has been limited by the development of topological and Dirac materials. IRG2 researchers demonstrated a novel and widely applicable strategy to engineer relativistic electron states to develop such materials through a high-entropy approach.

Understanding crack growth behavior in complex materials is critical to material design for damage tolerance.  An advancing crack, by virtue of its stress field, modifies the microstructure ahead of it including include changes in dislocation density, interfaces modification, decohesion of interfaces, void nucleation, and phase transformation .  Such changes in microstructure can in turn have a reciprocal effect on the advancing crack.  The problem is hierarchical in length scale and must be examined at the continuum, mesoscopic and atomic scales.

With over 2 million requests annually for only 8,000 reservations at El Bulli, the renowned restaurant is harder to get into than Harvard. During his visit to the MRSEC in December 2008, El Bulli founder and globally celebrated chef, Ferran Adriàƒ’ , talked with students in the Innovations course, discussed ways of bringing Center research on soft matter to the development of new foods, and gave an enthusiastically received public lecture on the dynamic relationship between modern science and modern cuisine. His visit was covered by Time and the local news stations.

An IRG1 team employed molecular beam epitaxy to synthesize heterostructures stacking a ferromagnetic topological insulator with a quantum anomalous Hall state, Cr-doped (Bi, Sb)2Te3, and an antiferromagnetic iron chalcogenide, FeTe, with an atomically sharp interface. An unexpected phenomenon emerges: interface-induced superconductivity.