Search

Top: Designed DNA structures of varying charge density and flexibility. Bottom left: Coacervate droplets formed from 1 DNA structure. Bottom middle/right: Binary droplets formed from a model system with 2 DNA structures.

The UC Santa Barbara ran a fully remote REU program in Summer 2020, with 18 students working on primarily computational projects. 18 students participated from 8 different colleges and universities. In addition to research, students participated in weekly intern group meetings, and weekly Zoom career building workshops, including Tips on Talks, Figures for Presentations, Poster Making, Finding Positions in Industry, Graduate School Panel, and others. All students presented their results in a virtual Summer Intern Colloquium.

Northwestern University MRSEC Shared Facilities play a central role in education and outreach programs. For example, the Northwestern University Center for Atom Probe Tomography recently hosted a two-day workshop to offer hands-on user training in the  latest methods in atom probe tomography including materials analysis and visualization tools.

In the Fall of 2019, the LRSM installed a uniquely equipped focused ion beam / scanning electron microscope from the TESCAN corporation. The instrument has a high flux xenon source, allowing rapid sample removal. It is equipped with two novel accessories, a cryogenic transfer system and a time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometer (ToF-SIMS). These two capabilities will allow the development of novel methods for the microanalytical characterization of soft matter and soft/hard matter interfaces.

Upon spontaneous deposition on surfaces underwater and moderate compression, single-component coacervates of adhesive peptide mimics (mfp-3S-pep) display orders of magnitude improvement compared with un-coacervated native (mfp-3S) or synthetic peptides. The increase in the work of adhesion is due to the peptide’s intrinsic cohesive properties upon coacervation correlated with dehydration, tight peptide packing and restricted peptide mobility.

UTK-MRSEC The Center for Advanced Materials & Manufacturing partnered with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to host the inaugural "Neutron Day," an event designed to deepen collaboration and foster interdisciplinary research connections.

Imaging Magnetic and Electric Fields with an Electron Microscope A new high-speed detector for electron microscopes uses every transmitted electron to measure electric and magnetic fields

A metal spoon can bend in half without breaking because of defects in its crystalline structure.  By contrast, a metal spoon with atoms in a disordered structure—a metallic glass spoon—would break via a catastrophic brittle fracture.  Here we show that disordered packings of particles ranging in size from atoms, as in a metallic glass, to nanoparticles to micron-sized colloids to centimeter-sized granular particles, show universal behavior in their microscopic structure and dynamics and in their macroscopic mechanical response, even for systems with extremely different interactions between

Strong interactions at the interface between a crystalline film and substrate can impart new structure to thin films. Here, a germanium surface (purple atoms) squeezes a BaTiO3 thin film above, revealing a hidden phase not seen in the bulk. The hidden phase of BaTiO3 shows oxygen octahedra cages (shaded in aqua) alternating in size. By combining theory, synchrotron x-ray diffraction, and electron microscopy, a new materials design approach has uncovered hidden traits of a material that can be expressed through articulated forces at an interface.