The University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) leads a new $7 million research collaboration involving six universities to develop a new generation of electronic devices in partnership with an industry consortium.

Toyota Research Institute of North America, collaborating with MRSEC-supported scientists and facilities have developed a novel [LiCl]/[FeOCl] heterointerface composite material (LFH) that achieves high lithium-ion conductivity from two traditionally non-conductive materials. The unique core-shell structure facilitates interstitial lithium-ion diffusion.

UD CHARM and Princeton’s PCCM coordinated with the Chicago MRSEC to host three virtual events (Soft Matter for All, Rising Stars, and a Professional Development Workshop) to highlight early career, high-impact research and ignite discussion for graduate students and postdocs pursuing academic and non-academic career paths.

The NU-MRSEC amplifies its societal impact by engaging industry and other partners, promoting commercialization, and providing shared facilities that are informed by the latest materials research.  In this manner, the latest scientific developments are efficiently brought to the marketplace, and society at large.

PAQM researcher Theanne Schiros creatied a virtual exhibition entitled 6878 KM. The exhibition features outreach and international sustainable development teaching natural dye chemistry to artisans, especially women, in ultra-poor communities in West Africa.

The recent Quantum Materials and Machine Learning Workshop brought together 22 invited speakers and in total 50 graduate students, postdoc, faculty attendees from 18 different institutions for an intensive exploration of cutting-edge developments at the intersection of quantum physics, materials science, and machine learning. The program featured established researchers alongside three postdoctoral fellows, fostering meaningful dialogue between different career stages.

Producing self-assembled structures of prescribed limited size and shape is a major challenge in nanoscience. A major achievement of the MRSEC was to elucidate a new chirality-based mechanism that leads to self-limiting assembly of colloidal rafts.

Linearly elastic elastomers coated with matrix proteins are widely used to assess the role of stiffness. Such experiments are often assumed to reproduce the effect of the mechanical environment experienced by cells in vivo. However, tissues and the extracellular matrix (ECM) are not linearly elastic materials. They exhibit far more complex mechanical behaviors. These behaviors include viscoelasticity, as well as mechanical plasticity, and nonlinear elasticity. Our theoretical and experimental work has revealed that matrix viscoelasticity regulates fundamental cell processes and can promote behaviors – such as proliferation, motility and spreading – that are not observed with elastic hydrogels in both two- and three-dimensional culture microenvironments.

Complex coacervation is a process in which oppositely charged macro-molecules in solution condense into dense liquids. While primarily driven by charge effects or, with DNA, basepairing, other macromolecular traits are likely to have strong effects. This Seed project leverages modern tools of DNA sequence control and biochemistry to study the fundamental physical principles underlying coacervation,

Spin crossover molecules form a vast class of materials for which the magnetic structure can be altered at the atomic level by an external stimulus. Diamagnetic low spin to paramagnetic high spin transitions can be induced by pressure, temperature, illumination with light, or magnetic pulses.