Highlights

LCMRC researchers have found an extraordinary nematic liquid crystal phase, a new entry in the most widely studied and widely applied class of liquid crystals. In the whole history of liquid crystals only four distinct nematic ground states have been found: the uniaxial, the biaxial, and, for chiral molecules, the helical nematic and blue phases.

Jun 27, 2013

UMass Amherst Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (2008)

Probing Polymer Structure with Light

M. Barnes (University of Massachusetts at Amherst), R. Hayward (University of Massachusetts at Amherst), T. Emrick (University of Massachusetts at Amherst)

Jun 18, 2013

Princeton Center for Complex Materials (2014)

Coupling a Single Electron Spin to a Microwave Cavity

K. D. Petersson (Princeton University), L. W. McFaul (Princeton University), M. D. Schroer (Princeton University), J. M. Taylor (Joint Quantum Institute), A. A. Houck (Princeton University), J. R. Petta (Princeton University)

IRG-D researchers at Princeton University have combined superconducting qubit technology with single spin devices, demonstrating that the microwave field of a superconducting resonator is sensitive to the spin of a single electron. The device may allow two spatially separated electron spins to be coupled, resulting in quantum entanglement.

Jun 18, 2013

Princeton Center for Complex Materials (2014)

A Key Signature of Dirac Fermions

Jun Xiong, Y.K. Luo, Y. H. Khoo, Shuang Jia, R. J. Cava and N. P. Ong (Princeton University)

In solids, the kinetic energy of an electron generally increases as the square of its momentum. By contrast, in a Topological Insulator such as Bi2Te2Se, electrons on the surface are predicted to be Dirac Fermions for which the energy increases linearly with momentum. In a magnetic field B, the allowed states of an electron are quantized into Landau Levels (LLs). The sequential emptying of occupied LLs in an increasing field leads to quantum

May 16, 2013

NYU Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (2014)

Impact Beyond the Classroom through Dissemination of Science Apps

Impact Beyond the Classroom through Dissemination of Science Apps: NYU MRSEC 0820341

•“Lewis dots” smartphone app showcased at the New York Technology Meetup, a special University-themed roundup in November 2011

May 16, 2013

NYU Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (2014)

Directed bonding colloidal assemblies

Y. Wang, Y. Wang, D. R. Breed, V. N. Manoharan, L. Feng, A. D. Hollingsworth, M. Weck, D. J. Pine

•The ability to design and assemble three-dimensional structures from colloidal particles, such as open structures for photonic band gap applications, is limited by the absence of specific directional bonds.

May 15, 2013

CRISP: Center for Research on Interface Structures and Phenomena (2011)

Finding a glass needle in a haystack

S.Y. Ding, Y.H. Liu, Y.L. Li, S.W. Sohn, C. S. O’Hern, A. Taylor, and J. Schroers (Yale University)

Metals that are glasses and can be formed like plastics are called bulk metallic glasses (BMG). But not all metals can be glasses and one has to sort through a large number of chemical compositions to find a good BMG. a trial and error processes could take up to a day to decide if a single composition can be molded. Sorting through hundreds of BMGs that are composed of four chemical elements would take up to a year. Now, with CRISP’s new combinatorial deposition system, more than 800 different compositions can be synthesized and characterized in a day.

May 15, 2013

CRISP: Center for Research on Interface Structures and Phenomena (2011)

Engineering the Electronic Structure of Crystalline Oxide Layers

D. P. Kumah (Yale University) A. S. Disa (Yale University) H. Chen (Columbia University) F. J. Walker (Yale University) C. H. Ahn (Yale University)

One avenue to creating new materials with useful electronic properties is to take existing materials and modify their structure at the level of the bonds between the constituent atoms: this is feasible because the distribution of electrons around an atom is sensitive to subtle atomic-scale distortion of its bonds. For this type of approach to succeed, one needs theoretical input on how the atoms should be arranged to achieve some desired electronic distribution.

May 14, 2013

The Bioinspired Soft Materials Center (2014)

Spontaneous Motion in Hierarchically Assembled Active matter

T. Sanchez, D. Chen, S. DeCamp and Z. Dogic

Most conventional materials are assembled from inanimate building blocks. We have explored the behavior of soft materials in which constituent energy consuming units that are assembled from animate energy consuming components. Thousands of these components spontaneously coordinate their microscopic activity to yield novel gels, liquid crystals and emulsions that crawl, flow, stream, spontaneously fracture and self-heal, thus mimicking some of the characteristics of living biological organisms.