The Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at Columbia University, the Center for Advanced Electronic Materials (AEM), unites scientists and engineers from chemistry, physics, and engineering to discover and design quantum materials that move and process information far more efficiently than today's technologies allow. Conventional electronics carry information by pushing electrical charge through wires, which wastes energy as heat and limits how small and fast devices can become. The research team creates quantum materials in which information instead travels as organized waves that lose very little energy, and it explores new states of matter that emerge when materials are gently steered by light or by electromagnetic fields. This work advances national priorities in semiconductors and quantum information sciences and points toward a future generation of low-power computing and communication. The Center is equally devoted to people, training a materials-science workforce at every stage from kindergarten through graduate and postdoctoral study. The Center brings hands-on science to hundreds of thousands of learners and strengthens the Nation's leadership in advanced materials.
IRG 1
IRG 1 develops atomically thin van der Waals semiconductors that host coherent, long-lived collective excitations, including spin waves and electric-dipole waves, and uses them to carry information across device-relevant distances with very little energy loss, toward ultralow-power information platforms that unify electronics and photonics.
IRG 2
IRG 2 co-designs materials platforms, including van der Waals heterostructures, misfit superlattices, and molecular crystals, together with engineered electromagnetic environments such as optical cavities, to stabilize quantum phases that have no equilibrium counterpart, without relying on intense laser pulses.