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At the University of Chicago MRSEC, we have constructed active liquid droplets comprised of the biopolymer actin, crosslinker and molecular motors myosin. The motors spontaneously divide the droplets in half.

To enhance drop formation, a team at the Harvard MRSEC led by Lewis created a new printing method that relies on generating sound waves to assist gravity, dubbing this new technique acoustophoretic printing.

Precise control over defects in materials is often a highly effective means to control properties and function. In oxide materials, which are the focus of enormous current attention for many existing and proposed applications, defects known as oxygen vacancies often play the key role. These vacancies, simply missing oxygen atoms in the structure, can have a significant impact on properties.

We discovered a new hexagonal metallic antiferromagnetic phase in the Cu-Mn-As system.   Electrical switching and read-out of tetragonal CuMnAs inspired a world-wide research effort in metallic antiferromagnets. Phase equilibria in this system (Fig. a) however is poorly understood.

UPenn researchers explored the potential energy landscapes of three different glassy and glass-forming model systems in simulation; discovering that the lowest energy glassy states of the system have an unexpected arrangement in high-dimensional configuration space.  Specifically, rather than being randomly scattered and separated by steep and tall energy barriers (akin to the lowest points in an Alpine landscape), the states were arranged into quasi-one-dimensional clusters, crumpled into a fractal shape, with only small barriers between them (akin to the low-lying points along the floor of the Grand Canyon). 

We investigate the magnetic order of atomically thin CrCl3 by employing vertical tunneling measurements, which are sensitive to the relative alignment of spins in different layers. 

The Wisconsin MRSEC has created thin films of a fascinating magnetic material, Pr2Ir2O7, in which the magnetic moments are frustrated: No matter how they are arranged, some of the moments are always fighting to change their direction, like two bar magnets with their north poles shoved together. Frustration creates a rich landscape for discovery and manipulation of new magnetic effects and of electronic phenomena linked to magnetism.

When an electrically-insulating material is grown on top of another insulator, the interface between the two insulators can be populated by mobile electrons. This has been achieved in interfaces that have a polarization discontinuity, such as AlGaN/GaN and LaAlO3/SrTiO3. It would be valuable to create a layer of mobile positive charges called holes, because electronic devices rely on charge carried by both electrons and holes.

In a five-PI collaboration within NU-MRSEC IRG-1, photoinduced charge separation is probed between InSe and two organic molecular semiconductors using novel experimental techniques that combine laser illumination with conductive scanning probe microscopy. In addition to providing insight for mixed-dimensional InSe-organic van der Waals heterostructures, this work establishes a general experimental methodology for studying localized charge transfer at the molecular scale that is applicable to other photoactive nanoscale systems.

“Experimenta con PREM” is a summer high school program organized by PREM-UPR (Univ. of Puerto Rico [PR]) faculty. Led by Wallace and Licurse, Penn participates annually by creating workshops and staffing those workshops with LRSM post-docs and grad students. This year at Penn, our volunteer facilitators (grad students Genesis Quiles-Galarza and Adriana Santiago-Ruiz) designed a series of materials science focused experiments and demos for 29 high school students.