Quantum materials have the potential to revolutionize technologies ranging from sensing to telecommunication and computation. However, advancement has been limited by the development of topological and Dirac materials. IRG2 researchers demonstrated a novel and widely applicable strategy to engineer relativistic electron states to develop such materials through a high-entropy approach.

Understanding crack growth behavior in complex materials is critical to material design for damage tolerance.  An advancing crack, by virtue of its stress field, modifies the microstructure ahead of it including include changes in dislocation density, interfaces modification, decohesion of interfaces, void nucleation, and phase transformation .  Such changes in microstructure can in turn have a reciprocal effect on the advancing crack.  The problem is hierarchical in length scale and must be examined at the continuum, mesoscopic and atomic scales.

With over 2 million requests annually for only 8,000 reservations at El Bulli, the renowned restaurant is harder to get into than Harvard. During his visit to the MRSEC in December 2008, El Bulli founder and globally celebrated chef, Ferran Adriàƒ’ , talked with students in the Innovations course, discussed ways of bringing Center research on soft matter to the development of new foods, and gave an enthusiastically received public lecture on the dynamic relationship between modern science and modern cuisine. His visit was covered by Time and the local news stations.

An IRG1 team employed molecular beam epitaxy to synthesize heterostructures stacking a ferromagnetic topological insulator with a quantum anomalous Hall state, Cr-doped (Bi, Sb)2Te3, and an antiferromagnetic iron chalcogenide, FeTe, with an atomically sharp interface. An unexpected phenomenon emerges: interface-induced superconductivity.

Graduate students at the University of Arkansas bring cutting edge technology to local middle school students and allow them to explore the world of nanoscience in real-time. The MRSEC graduate students with the help of an education outreach program from the FEI, electron microscopy company were able to bring a portable scanning electron microscope (SEM) into the classrooms of local middle schools.

The interplay between spin transport and exchange coupling profoundly affects charge transport between conventional metals and ferromagnets. This results in  giant magnetoresistance and the spin valve effect in multilayer thin films, phenomena of great importance for magnetic data storage. MRSEC researchers have developed Co-Cu-Co multilayer nanowires to explore these phenomena in nanowire geometries. 

Science Storms, the newest permanent exhibit at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, opened to the public on March 18th.  MRSEC graduate students, postdocs, research staff and faculty assisted with the compilation of an inventory of chemical reactions for the Interactive Periodic Tables.  In addition, aspects of granular materials research  in IRGs 1 and 2 are featured prominently.   MRSEC members, Heinrich Jaeger and Steve Sibener participated in key advisory groups for this new exhibit.

To increase awareness, promote international collaboration, and broaden participation from traditionally underrepresented groups in the NSF-MRSEC program, an NSF-MRSEC booth was featured at the XXV International Materials Research Congress in Cancun, Mexico.