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The IRG-B team is uncovering new insights into how cells use macromolecules to function, while also using these insights toward the design of new responsive materials systems with highly tunable properties. Their research is helping to lay the foundation for a new field of "living" materials science at the interface of biology, chemistry, engineering, and physics — addressing the NSF's Big Idea "The Rules of Life."

IRG Leaders: Kathleen Stebe & Randall D. Kamien

Senior Investigators; Tobias Baumgart, Peter Collings, Dennis E. Discher, Tom C. Lubensky, Ravi Radhakrishnan, Shu Yang, Arjun Yodh

Soft matter conforms, assembles, and reconfigures in response to the geometry and chemistry of bounding surfaces and interfaces. IRG-1 aims to harness these effects to create new responsive materials and structures using complex fluids, embedded particles, micro-patterned substrates, and confining volumes. The substrates and particles will be designed with topographies, geometries, and surface chemistries selected to impose constraints on complex fluids, including wetting conditions to three-phase contact lines, anchoring conditions to liquid-crystal director fields, and curvature gradients to fluid interfaces & lipid bilayers. In this way fuller understanding of how such factors affect physical properties of soft materials will be developed, and this understanding will be used to create new materials with distinctive, dynamically reconfigurable structures and to develop design rules for controlling positions, orientations, and migration of "particles" on and within these structures.

IRG Senior Participants: Tomás Arias (Phys, co-leader), David Muller (A&EP, co-leader), Jack Blakely (MS&E), Joel D. Brock (A&EP), Paulette Clancy (C&BE), James R. Engstrom (C&BE) Collaborators: J. Anthony (U. Kentucky), D. Bowler (Univ. Coll. London), D. Dale (CHESS), R. Headrick (U. Vermont), A. Kazimirov (CHESS), H. Hwang (U. Tokyo), D. Smilgies (CHESS), Y. Suzuki (UC Berkeley), A. Woll (CHESS)

Our group aims to understand and control the dynamics of growth of complex materials and, in particular, the formation and control of the crucial interfacial layers, while fostering cross-fertilization between the organic and oxide communities. The goal is to develop the ability to fabricate heterostructures or meta-materials with the single atomic-layer precision required to achieve the ultimate in electronic device performance. We are focusing on the growth dynamics of high dielectric constant complex oxides, such as heterostructures of LaTiO3/SrTiO3, and the controlled growth of thin film organic semiconductors, such as pentacene.

The major theme of the Cornell MRSEC is mastery of materials at the atomic and molecular level. New ways to synthesize, characterize and understand interfaces and surfaces at the atomic and molecular scales must continue to be invented and exploited to enable forefront discoveries in many fields. The center is aided in these tasks by extensive shared facilities on campus supported by a large interdisciplinary materials community extending well beyond specific MRSEC projects. The Center supports an exceptionally strong education program for pre- K-12, undergraduate and graduate students and the public.

IRG 1: Defects in Nanostructures, is focused on engineering unprecedented physical properties into inorganic nanostructures by controlling defect formation and doping, and will exploit these properties to develop new technologies ranging from laser cooling to solar concentration.

The Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst focuses on fundamental problems in polymer science and engineering. The Center also provides seed funding for new opportunities in polymer research. The Center supports education outreach efforts that include collaborations with nearby women's colleges and with minority institutions, development of curricular materials for middle-school students and outreach to the general public through the National Plastics Museum. The MRSEC also supports shared experimental facilities that are accessible to center participants and to outside users, and broad industrial outreach efforts.

Research in this MRSEC is organized into two interdisciplinary research groups. One group emphasizes the manipulation of polymer morphology by controlled interfacial interactions. A second group explores the use of environmentally benign supercritical carbon dioxide to enhance the efficiency of polymer processing.

To transform materials science by developing controllable far-from-equilibrium materials that crawl, flow, swim and walk, and thus mimic essential traits of living biological organisms.

Fundamental Issues in Materials Integration on Silicon investigates the fundamental atomistic and mesoscopic mechanisms underlying the integration of materials, devices and structures on silicon, as an integration platform. Materials integration on Si leverages the power of CMOS through the addition of other components, thereby increasing function while maintaining the advantages and the versatility of Si processing and device technology. This research provides the foundation for development of vastly enhanced and totally new electronic devices. The MRSEC enables the assembly of broad expertise that allows us to address the detailed structural, chemical, and electronic issues underlying heterogeneous integration. Si is used as the model of a multi-functional material: as an integration platform, a template for growth of nanoscale structures, a mechanical element, and a semiconductor.

IRG Senior Participants: Darrell Schlom (co-leader, Mat Sci), Kyle Shen (co-leader, Phys), Joel Brock (Appl Phys), J.C. Séamus Davis (Phys), Craig Fennie (Appl Phys), Richard, E.-A. Kim (Phys) G. Hennig (MatSci), David Muller (Appl Phys)
Collaborators: M. Lawler (SUNY Binghamton)

Our group aims to study and control complex electronic materials -- systems where strong quantum interactions can result in unexpected and novel phenomena, including superconductivity, high thermopower, unconventional magnetism, and metal-insulator transitions. The physical properties of these complex electronic materials will be finely tuned through a variety of approaches including epitaxial strain, chemical doping, and interfacial engineering. These materials will be characterized using various probes of the electronic structure, both in real-space (STM, STEM) and momentum-space (ARPES, x-ray scattering), which will provide valuable input into developing realistic theoretical models for these novel and exciting systems.

The vision of IRG-3, Hierarchical Multifunctional Macromolecular Materials, is to develop a multiple interaction approach to polymer materials design that enables multifunctional applications by decoupling the optimization of two or more desired attributes. The IRG will explore this paradigm in three integrated thrusts that aim to: (i) control aqueous rheology and gelation with polymers containing cellulose ether blocks; (ii) control the structure and properties of block-polymer-based "amphiplexes", assemblies of polyanions with cationic copolymer micelles; and (iii) design and prepare novel multiblock polymers featuring independent control of ordered-state symmetries and mechanical properties. Intellectual advances by the IRG will impact a wide range of societally important technologies, including batteries, composites, food, fuel cells, lithography, oil and gas recovery, personal care, pharmaceutical formulations, textiles, water purification and treatment.