The Materials Research Facilities Network (MRFN) has recently been established and is currently in operation at ca. 50% of MRSEC sites. The goal of the MRFN is to maximize the usage of MRSEC facilities and is directed towards the efficient and strategic development of materials characterization within the United States.

An insulator is usually described as a material with completely filled electronic bands that do not contribute to any interesting transport behavior. However, recent theories have shown that in a particular class of band insulators called "topological insulators", the quantum motion of these electronically inert bulk electrons are entangled in non-trivial ways, giving rise to highly unusual conducting states at the surface of the material.

Self-Assembled Nanoscale Dielectric (SAND) thin films are emerging as leading contenders in applications for organic and hybrid thin film transistors, allowing for low operating voltages and ideal device characteristics in next-generation flexible electronics.Â’  Dielectric properties are highly dependent on the behavior of the counter-anions within the film, specifically their position and motion under applied electric fields.Â’  Through utilization of advanced x-ray techniques, including long-period X-ray Standing Wave and X-ray Reflectivity, it is possible to locate and moni

Chemically-etched SrTiO3 is widely used as a clean, atomically-smooth template for epitaxical growth of most complex oxides. Since native point defects in these materials are electrically-active and mobile, there is a need to lower their density. Download

Grain boundaries are inherent defects in most materials of technological relevance. Understanding how a growing crack interacts with them will enable design of microstructures to enhance the material toughness, a

The ability to modify the electronic structure and properties of graphene is an important step towards the large scale fabrication of electronic devices based on graphene technology.

Stabilized emulsions containing the oscillating Belousov - Zhabotinsky chemical reaction (BZ) show interesting dynamics. Each drop acts as an independent chemical clock. However, they chemically communicate and exhibit collective behavior. In (a) three photos of the same hexagonally packed 100 micron diameter BZ drops are shown 80 seconds apart. White corresponds to the oxidized state; black to reduced. The pattern is explained in (b); first all green drops are in the oxidized state, then all blue drops and finally all red drops.

fd virus is a polymeric virus 1 mm in length and 10 nm in diameter. We bind fluorescently labeled fd to 1 mm diameter polystyrene spheres creating a charged polymer stabilized colloid (hairy bead) and measure the interparticle potential using a double laser trap. We first measure the interaction energy of (a) bare beads and (b) then the hairy beads, seen here in fluorescence microscopy. (c) Electron micrograph of hairy beads. The repulsive energy of hairy beads is large when the beads are close.

A simple computational model demonstrates the assembly of self-limited filamentous bundles. The images are taken from dynamic Monte Carlo simulations in which chiral subunits spontaneously assemble under different interaction strengths and degrees of chirality. (a) Moderate interactions and moderate chirality reproducibly lead to a self-limited bundle with three layers of subunits, while stronger chirality (b) results in a self-limited two-layer bundle. (c) With strong interactions, frustration is relieved by defects, which enable the formation of branched networks and irregular bundles.