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. IAC conducts a series of short courses (required for instrument access), which involve direct experimental demonstrations and hands-on instruction, ranging from basic sample preparation devices to high-end electron microscopes.

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. Rod Priestley and Cliff Brangwynne spent months developing the presentation that explained the basics of polymers, discussed their career paths in science and overviewed their MRSEC research on a level that a 5 year old to an adult could understand and appreciate.

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. Much recent attention has focused on the negatively charged NV center in diamond, which can be measured and initialized optically, exhibits long spin coherence times at room temperature, and has narrow, spin-conserving 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. In this collaboration, researchers in IRG3 identify two new physical mechanisms that allow for manipulation of nuclear spins using only electric fields.

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 their bulk values.

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 and B. In comparison to melt-crystallized PE (Fig.

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. By examining electronic behavior on the surface of bismuth at high magnetic field, the Princeton MRSEC group showed that a combination of strain and electron-electron interactions lifts the degeneracy of electronic states in this 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. The Princeton MRSEC group has observed this new effect (called the chiral anomaly) in two distinct topological metals, Na3Bi and GdPtBi (1,2).

Graduate Students for Diversity in Science is composed of an interdisciplinary group of young scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). The cornerstone of the group lies in its recognition of the cultural heritage and diversity of many exceptional scientists who have set foundations through research, service, and leadership in their respective disciplines and across many boundaries. GSDS aims to promote participation in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields and foster an inclusive atmosphere that celebrates diversity.

The DNP-NMR technique in the MRSEC Shared Experimental Facilities allows the selective measurement of surface species, in addition to enabling large sensitivity enhancements. The biradicals serve only to act as an antenna for the microwaves. Very small quantities of biradicals are introduced into the sample, which do not change the surface chemistry that results from hydration.