Molecular ferroelectrics have the potential to become viable material alternatives to inorganic ferroelectrics. Unlike traditional oxide ferroelectrics, molecular ferroelectrics are structurally flexible, can be engineered at the molecular level, and can be assembled on nearly any surface, including flexible sheets and fabrics. The application of molecular ferroelectrics hinges, however, on the availability of strategies to fabricate thin films with defined structure and morphology on a large scale, which at the same time preserve their ferroelectric properties.  

Antiferromagnets are magnetically ordered materials which lack the net magnetization known for ferromagnets. In an antiferromagnet, spins arrange in opposing sublattices with mutually compensating magnetization. Not unlike ferromagnets, antiferromagnets can have domains. In a simple case, the domains are differentiated through spin reversal. Identifying a specific antiferromagnetic domain is a notoriously difficult experimental problem.

How spinning electrons communicate across interfaces  

Objective: Train Utah MRSEC students to effectively present materials research.

Objective: Estimate spin-orbit coupling in in a wide variety of organic semiconductors. 

Understanding the transport of electrons in films of touching nanocrystals is of central importance for their future use in printed electronic devices such as light emitting diodes, solar cells, or transistors. The research team developed a new theory that describes the transition of the electron conduction in doped nanocrystal films from a semiconducting to a metallic behavior.

A MRSEC innovation comes back home to reveal the atomic structure of new materials

Designing materials nature never intended