Transformative advances occur when new types of material organization and behavior are conceived, created, and controlled. The Penn State Center for Nanoscale Science creates four interdisciplinary research groups (IRGs) to meet this goal. The IRG1 team predicts, synthesizes and develops layered materials that couple together electrical, magnetic and mechanical properties in new ways with potential application in cell phones, high-power electronic devices, nonvolatile memory, ultrasound, and precision actuation. In IRG2, self-powered active materials are developed to sense and react to the environment through their collective behavior, capturing key elements of biological behavior in abiotic systems with potential application in biomedicine, diagnostics and sensors, and autonomous materials repair. IRG3 is pioneering the development of electronic metalattices, systems that organize materials in three dimensions on a few-nanometer length scale through innovative high-pressure synthesis, with unique electronic, optical, magnetic and thermal properties. In IRG4, light is used to modulate the controlled, reconfigurable assembly of diverse arrays of nanoparticles purposefully designed to harbor unique collective electronic and optical properties for new types of optical devices and bioinspired sensing. This cohesive culture of shared science is then extended to educate and inspire future scientists and members of the public, bring advances to market through industrial outreach, and reach the wider community through international collaboration and facilities networks. Hands-on materials-oriented kits, smartphone apps, summer science camps, and programs to support students from diverse backgrounds reach thousands of students each year. Researchers at all career stages will be instilled with a native expectation that materials research naturally reaches across disciplines and is open to individuals with diverse backgrounds.

The goal of our interdisciplinary team is to establish the basic science for how strainscapes (combinations of anisotropic strain, strain gradients and interfacial heterostrain) may be used to manipulate the flow of charge, spin, and energy across length scales.

Developing resilient soft materials optimized for load-bearing and toughness is a long-standing challenge which, if solved, could enable the design of advanced resins, fabrics, packages, separation technologies, and tissue replacements. Inspired by the graded and hierarchical s tructures of natural marine materials, this IRG aims to (i) develop new strategies for materials processing that integrate precise, discrete polymer chemistries with non-equilibrium processing methods to achieve controlled multi•phase and interfacial structure, (ii) understand the interactions and mechanics of internal interfaces in these materials, and (iii) establish the multiscale structure-property relationships to provide the foundational design rules for creating new classes of versatile, multi phase soft materials.

Senior Investigators: J. M. Kikkawa & I.-W. Chen IRG Leaders; D. A. Bonnell, P. K. Davies, A. M. Rappe, J. M. Vohs IRG-5 focuses on creating & understanding novel hierarchical interfacial oxide materials. By juxtaposing oxides at various length scales, responsive instabilities appear at their interfaces & give rise to new functionality. This team has expertise in theory, synthesis, & experiment, tailored to studying these instabilities. Quantitative schstronges for modeling ferroelectrics (pioneered in the IRG), predict exciting effects between atomic layers of magnetoresistive & ferroelectric oxides and possible oxide applications to microfluidics.

The Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at Princeton University addresses fundamental problems in the science and engineering of complex materials. Research in this Center, which has been named the Princeton Center for Complex Materials, is organized into four interdisciplinary research groups. The Center also provides seed funding for new opportunities in materials research. The Center supports efforts in materials education at all levels including summer undergraduate research experiences, a topical summer institute for graduate students working on materials-related areas, and outreach to the pre-college level via an internet-based software developed by the Center and prototyped in a nearby science museum. The MRSEC also supports shared experimental facilities that are accessible to center participants and to outside users, and has strong research collaborations with industry and national laboratories.

A common theme in the four interdisciplinary research groups of the MRSEC is fundamental understanding of the links between molecular structure or mesoscopic texture and macroscopic properties with the goal of rationally designing materials for technological purposes. One group investigates the unusual phases and excitations in low-dimensional electronic materials, including high temperature superconductors and semiconductor heterostructures. A second group explores engineered structures based on semiconducting organic thin films for application to optoelectronic devices. A third group pursues the materials science of organic molecules that order spontaneously in solutions or melts with an outlook on advanced lubricant and novel lithographic applications. A fourth group emphasizes the development of nanostructured composites with improved mechanical and dielectric properties by mimicking biological composite materials. Participants in the Center currently include 26 senior investigators, 8 postdoctoral associates, 16 graduate students, 14 undergraduates, and 3 technicians and other support personnel. Professor William B. Russel directs the MRSEC.

The range of possible semiconductor materials and materials properties is extensive and barely explored. Materials processing routes that allow fabrication of single-crystalline semiconductor structures for which one or more dimensions are smaller than 100 nm (dots, ribbons, membranes) provide opportunities to realize material states and behaviors that are unconventional and unexpected. IRG 1 examines how the combination of nanoscale patterning and structuring, strain manipulation, and phase engineering can be used to push semiconductor materials from their natural ‘bulk’ states to realize unique and undiscovered functionality.

The Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at Johns Hopkins University supports research on nanostructured materials, with a focus on the development of novel low dimensional nanostructures with unique physical properties and diverse technological applications. The research combines experimental and theoretical studies to develop an understanding of the interrelationship between the properties of nanostructures and the degrees of freedom available for their design and fabrication. Materials to be studied include multilayers of functionally dissimilar materials, e.g. metals and insulators, arrays of nanowires, and ultrafine granular materials. The MRSEC also supports shared experimental facilities for materials research, exploratory research through seed funding, and collaborations with industry and other academic institutions. The Center's educational outreach program includes summer internships for talented high school students in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Institute for the Advancement of Youth. The Center supports 7 senior investigators, 3 post-doctoral research associates, 5 graduate students, 1 administrative assistant, and 4 undergraduate students. The MRSEC is directed by Professor C-L. Chien. %%% The Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at Johns Hopkins University supports interdisciplinary research on materials whose structure is modulated on a nanometer scale. As a result of the microstructure, these materials display unique physical properties which have potential technological applications. The research combines experimental and theoretical studies to develop an understanding of the interrelationship between the properties of nanostructures and the degrees of freedom available for their design and fabrication. Materials to be studied include multilayers of functionally dissimilar materials, e.g. metals and insulators, arrays of nanowires, and ultrafine granular materials. The MR SEC also supports shared experimental facilities for materials research, exploratory research through seed funding, and collaborations with industry and other academic institutions. The Center's educational outreach program includes summer internships for talented high school students in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Institute for the Advancement of Youth. The MRSEC is directed by Professor C-L. Chien.

IRG3 focuses on the interactions of biological systems with functional organic materials on the biologically important 1-100 nm scale. This length scale is commensurate with a range of biological assemblies (lipid assemblies, proteins, viruses, and cells) that lie between the well-studied molecular and micrometer limits, and therefore offers exciting prospects for discovery. IRG3 combines hierarchical multi-scale theory for polymeric, amphiphilic and liquid-crystalline systems with the synthesis of functional polymers and development of novel nanofabrication processes to understand and exploit interactions between nanoscale surface topography, patterned surface chemical functionality and biological assemblies. The research is fundamental and will impact a range of biotechnologies, including materials for rapid identification of viral pathogens (e.g. for biosensors), for profiling of the protein composition of cells or for control of cell behavior in vitro.

Leaders: Nicholas Abbott, Paul Bertics