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Program Highlights

Ferroelectric Tunnel Junctions Enhanced by a Polar Oxide Barrier Layer

Nebraska MRSEC researchers have proposed a new concept to design high-performance ferroelectric tunnel junctions with enhanced tunneling electroresistance (TER). This design exploits property of a polar oxide material to create an ionic charge at the interface.

Harnessing the Rules of Life to Enable Bio-Inspired Soft Materials

The Princeton MRSEC iSuperSeed focuses on the topics of polymeric materials driving structure and biological function at (i) the intracellular length scale, where recent observations of phase-separated liquid phases (left top image)  are relevant to understanding responses inside cells, and (ii) extra-cellular length scales where porous material change shape or regulate run-and-tumble dynamics

Majorana zero modes for topological quantum computation

Majorana zero modes (MZMs) can serve as building blocks for topologically protected quantum computers, promising scalable and fault-tolerant quantum computation platforms in the future. Princeton MRSEC investigators Ali Yazdani and B. Andrei Bernevig have realized a novel material platform based on the topological hinge state of bismuth.

Disassembling 2D van der Waals crystals into macroscopic monolayers

The Zhu group developed a facile method to disassemble vdW single crystals layer by layer into monolayers with near-unity yield and with dimensions limited only by bulk crystal sizes (scheme shown on top). The macroscopic monolayers are comparable in quality to microscopic monolayers from conventional Scotch tape exfoliation.

Bio-materials for Fashion Introduced to Broad Audience at NY Times Sustainability Summit

Professor Theanne Schiros spoke to a full house of over 700 as part of a Sustainability Summit focused on the environmental impact of the fashion industry and positive solutions. She is in engaged in sustainable development for economic empowerment of women and artisans in Guinea and Cote d’Ivoire, providing trainings on natural dyes and biofabrication.

Computational Design of Triblock Amphiphiles with 1-nm Domains

Block polymers are a class of versatile self-assembling soft materials that can form exquisite nanostructures for applications including ion transport membranes for batteries and fuel cells, and templates for inorganic oxide catalysts.

From Semiconductor to Metal in Two-dimensional Tellurium

Atomically-thin sheets of semiconductors have been of immense interest since the Nobel-Prize-winning discovery of graphene or two-dimensional (2D) carbon. Such materials represent the ultimate limit of “scaling” to small sizes, of vital importance in the semiconductor device industry.

Designing the flow properties of concentrated particle suspensions

In a concentrated suspension of small solid particles in a liquid under shear, a large number of dynamically evolving particle-particle and particle-liquid interfaces controls the overall flow properties.

Wafer-scale synthesis of monolayer two-dimensional porphyrin polymers

At the University of Chicago MRSEC, Park and Sibener developed a synthesis of two-dimensional (2D) polymers with wafer-scale homogeneity, one monolayer thick, using a general and scalable growth method called laminar assembly polymerization.

Unique Facilities: Benchtop X-ray Spectrometer for Accelerating Discovery and Characterization of Novel Phosphorous-Rich Materials

MEM-C has developed a unique high-resolution x-ray emission spectrometer for studying phosphorus-rich, air-sensitive materials.

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