Shape morphing systems may find potential application in smart textiles, autonomous robotics, biomedical devices, drug delivery and tissue engineering. Lewis and Mahadevan at the Harvard MRSEC have developed 4-D printing by creating a hydrogel-cellulose fibril ink that could be printed to induce a programmable shape change as recently reported in Nature Materials.

Optimum function of plasmonic nanocrystal in assembly requires precision control of separation. Often, larger separations are desired while still maintaining order. With our COMPASS collaborators, Hough and Donnio, IRG-4 has developed a new class of building blocks that incorporate dendrimer ligands. Dendrimer-nanocrystal building blocks have diameters controlled by dendrimer “generation.” This work was published in  J. Am. Chem. Soc. 137, 10728–10734 (2015).

The NSF has awarded additional funds to support helium conservation in the Property Measurement Shared Experimental Facility (SEF). The SEF hosts over a dozen low temperature measurement capabilities requiring liquid helium.

There is an abiding interest in using nanocrystals as laser gain media due to their tunable emission wavelengths, low cost, and solution processability. However, it has been proven difficult to achieve low lasing thresholds suitable for practical applicatons.  MRSEC members Engel and Talapin showed that colloidal semiconductor nanoplatelets (NPLs) with electronic structure of quantum wells can produce optical gain and lase in the red, yellow, green, and blue regions of the visible spectrum with low thresholds and high gains, both a significant improvement over colloidal quantum dots [1].

Present day silicon chips for communication and computing are densely packed with transistors and other passive elements.

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.

Siderophores are compounds in microorganisms that bind and store iron. Parallels between the chemistry of compounds secreted by mussels to aid adhesion to rocks, and the chemistry of some siderophores inspired UCSB researchers Butler, Israelachvili, and Waite and their coworkers to study their adhesive properties.

Artificially designed planar devices known as metasurfaces can control the output of an incident beam to generate prechosen patterns.

A team of Duke graduate students has been named one of five companies receiving a total of $250,000 through the NC IDEA Foundation - an organization committed to supporting entrepreneurial business innovation and economic advancement in North Carolina.

We demonstrate nanoparticle surface patterning, which utilizes thermodynamically driven segregation of polymer ligands from a uniform polymer brush into surface pinned micelles following a change in solvent quality.