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Research in IRG-1 in the UMN MRSEC has brought oxide electrochemical transistors to the verge of applications. Cycling endurance and switching speed are the two final roadblocks to realistic devices. Last year, a major, record-breaking advance was made with cycling endurance. This year, a record-breaking advance with switching speed has been made.

Research in this Seed has resulted in important methods to theoretically predict decoherence, or information loss, in quantum systems that could function as quantum computers or quantum sensors. The project developed algorithms for practical implementation on current noisy-intermediate scale quantum computers.

Electron hydrodynamics, in which the motion of electrons are viewed analogous to the flow of a viscous fluid, has emerged as a powerful framework to understand transport behavior of systems with strong electron-electron interactions.  Relating theory to experiment however has proven a challenge owing to the difficult to measure the electron-electron scattering time. 

IRG2 has pushed the boundaries of energy transport  in superatomic materials, making major strides in controlling phonon, electron, and exciton interactions. The team published a breakthrough report in Science 2023 demonstrating the emergence of acoustic exciton-polarons in the van der Waals superatomic semiconductor Re6Se8Cl2 (Fig. 1a,b)—quasiparticles that enable ultrafast, phonon-shielded transport, surpassing silicon over nanoseconds. The team also uncovered coherent superradiant transport in 1D superatomic crystals.

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Pluronic-based hydrogels are promising materials for hosting polymer and protein-based microcompartments that can act as artificial cells. However, their limited mechanical strength and toughness limits practical applications as tissue scaffolds or media for transport and storage of molecules or microcompartments. Creating densely connected molecular network structure can improve the network toughness by allowing for uniform load distribution among micelles.

Northwestern University IRG-2 has developed a novel “leaky integrate-and-fire” organic electrochemical neuron for neuromorphic perception systems based on vertical organic electrochemical transistors (vOECTs). Essential to this realization is the introduction of a new n-type ionic electronic conductive material that provides a balanced response to p-type vOECTs, thereby enabling high-performance complementary circuits.

A stick-on gel for plants could one day offer a simple, safe and targeted way to treat diseases and pests. Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed an adhesive gel that can be loaded with substances, such as small molecule drugs or nanoparticles, and applied directly onto a plant to deliver those materials into its tissues. In tests, a gel loaded with antibiotics cleared a bacterial infection in a plant within about 48 hours.

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a spray-on polymer coating that could help plants resist harmful bacterial infections and survive drought. The advance, published in ACS Materials Letters, could help strengthen global food security as increased environmental stresses continue to intensify plant disease pressures.

In January, Qiyuan Chen presented MRSEC-supported research at the 40th AAAI-26 Conference in Singapore. Chen’s presentation introduced a new physics-aware generative AI framework designed to decode the complex structure of disordered materials.