This year the Wisconsin MRSEC launched the first Wisconsin MRSEC Excellence in Open Science Prize. The winner was graduate student Bradley Dallin for his work on molecules interacting with water, with potential applications from understanding human blood to protein folding diseases like Alzheimer’s. Bradley shared his results in papers, but also shared all his simulations and tools in an open accessible format for the community, increasing the impact of his work.

Majorana zero modes (MZMs) can serve as building blocks for topologically protected quantum computers, promising scalable and fault-tolerant quantum computation platforms in the future. Princeton MRSEC investigators Ali Yazdani and B. Andrei Bernevig have realized a novel material platform based on the topological hinge state of bismuth. Consistent with model calculations, their high-resolution STM experiments revealed the emergence of MZMs when the hinge state is influenced by ferromagnetic iron (Fe) clusters and superconductivity under suitable conditions.

The MRSEC co-sponsored NEW.Mech, a one-day workshop held in October 2016 at Harvard. The annual conference brings together researchers to explore new directions in the mechanics of materials and structures.

Most inorganic quantum dots are obtained through organic synthesis using surface ligands. When deposited on two-dimensional materials such as MoS2, such ligands form an “interlayer” between the components of the resulting mixed-dimensional heterojunction. To understand the effects of this interlayer, a collaborative theory and experimental effort in NU-MRSEC IRG-1 effort has modeled and characterized the electronic structure of CdSe nanoplatelets with well-controlled ligand-dipole terminations.

Through molecular dynamics simulations, the Northwestern University MRSEC Super-Seed has studied the dependence of pore size dimension on the desalination properties of COF membranes.

The Northwestern University MRSEC sponsors the Women Supporting Women in the Sciences initiative, which is a partnership with the University of Dodoma and the Nelson Mandela African Institution for Science and Technology in Tanzania. This initiative develops professional development workshops for female STEM students.

This IRG-1 collaboration, is focused on the mechanics of disordered solid granular matter and is led by Arratia, Ma (post-doc, Yodh lab) and Jerolmack (MRSEC collaborator). This work[1] discovered that stable particle aggregates can be formed by a continuous wetting and evaporation process via formation of solid bridges: particle strands that connect larger aggregates. These strands can increase the strength (bonding) of particle aggregates by an order of magnitude or more.

A collaboration between members of IRG-1 (Fakhraai, Lee, Turner) explored the properties of disordered packings in different environments. Specifically, they investigated the effects of extreme confinement on the thermal properties of polymer-infiltrated nanoparticle films. The films are formed using capillary-rise infiltration (CaRI) method in which polymer (polystyrene [PS]) is infiltrated into a nanoparticle film to form highly confined disordered solids (top panel).

The Janmey and Shenoy groups in IRG-2 studied multiaxial response of soft tissues (top left image). Measurements (Janmey) and a theoretical model (Shenoy) show that the tissue rheology emerges from an interplay between strain-stiffening polymer networks and the volume-conserving cells within them.

With few exceptions, polydispersity or molecular heterogeneity in matter tends to impede assembly Shape transformations of liquid droplets, for example, are readily understood on the basis of homogeneous material responses. Here, Yodh and Yang in IRG-3 studied drops filled with polydisperse nematic liquid crystal oligomers (NLCOs). They discovered that chain-length heterogeneity in the drops promotes reversible shape transitions to a rich variety of non-spherical morphologies with unique internal structure.