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Molecular Biomimetics - Making materials one molecule at a time, via the Biology’s ways, allows an intricate control of nano- and microstructures that permit tailoring functional properties towards practical applications.

Developed in GEMSEC, biocombinatorially selected solid binding peptides with short (7-15) amino acid (AA) sequences can bind to atomically flat materials via molecular recognition that leads to surface diffusion, clustering and long-range ordered assembly commensurate with the underlying crystallographic solid lattice.

Printed transistors employing both the bench-mark polymer semiconductor poly(3-hexyl-thiophene) and ultra-high capacitance ion gel gate insulators exhibit unusually large hole mobilities near 1 cm2/Vs at high charge densities (0.2 holes/ring).

J. Emery1, B. Detlefs2, H. Karmel1, V. Wheeler3, D.K. Gaskill3, M. Hersam1, J. Zegenhagen2, M. Bedzyk1 1Northwestern University Materials Research Science & Engineering Center 2European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, 3U.S. Naval Research Lab

Utah MRSEC provided staff and faculty support for a Science Olympiad coaches’ clinic in November 2012, to help science teachers prepare to coach teams.   37 middle and high school science teachers, 22 of them female, from across the state dedicated their Saturday to attend the clinic to improve Science Olympiad team coaching skills.  

Over the past decade, semiconducting carbon nanotube (CNT) thin films have been recognized as contending materials for a wide range of applications in electronics, energy, and sensing. Nevertheless, CNT transistor performance suitable for real-world applications awaits understanding-based progress in the integration of independently pioneered device components. We achieve this here by integrating high-purity semiconducting CNT films with a customdesigned hybrid inorganic-organic gate dielectric.

Diana E. Proffit1, Thomas Philippe1, Jonathan D. Emery1, Qing Ma2, D. Bruce Buchholz1, Peter W. Voorhees1, Michael J. Bedzyk1, Robert P.H. Chang1, Thomas O. Mason1 1Northwestern University Materials Research Science & Engineering Center2DND-CAT, Northwestern Synchrotron Research Center at Advanced Photon

In the past few years, the theory of topological band structures has been generalized beyond topological insulators to include topological semimetals, including Weyl semimetals, Dirac semimetals and other “symmetry protected” topological states.  HgTe is a semimetal in which the degeneracy of the conduction and valence band at the G point is protected by symmetry.  In their early work on topological insulators, Fu and Kane showed that straining HgTe opens a gap at G, resulting in a topological insulator. 

Novel, cylindrical, ribbon-like membranes are formed when colloidal particles adsorb at the air-water interfaces of droplets confined between two glass plates (Fig. a). We have found that the ease with which such ribbon membranes bend depends on particle shape. Ellipsoidal particles on the interface locally deform the interface and thereby introduce strong capillary forces into the membrane that couple the particles into networks. The resultant membrane scaffolding can resist bending by as much as