MRSEC investigators team-up to create an adult coloring book. The coloring book, “Phases of Matter,” designed to help the general pubic understand physics and phase behavior.

The NU-MRSEC has supported Joint Undertaking for an African Materials Institute (JUAMI), which is the largely NSF-funded program aimed at fostering connections between young researchers in the US and those in Eastern Africa.

The CEM Student Internal Advisory Council advises CEM in the interests of students and postdocs and organizes technical and team-building events. 

In transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDC) monolayers, there are two inequivalent valleys (energy extrema points in the band structure) related by time-reversal symmetry. Fundamental optical excitations, or excitons (bound electron-hole pairs) are formed at these valleys.

A novel strategy offers new opportunities to program dynamic behaviors in synthetic polymeric systems, leading to scalable synthesis of “smart” nanosystems. Novel PMMA strand-exchange, inspired by DNA nanotechnologies, enables dynamic behaviors in synthetic polymeric systems. Polymer assembly produces spherical or wormlike micelles, which can be reversibly switched between different morphologies.

IRG-3 researchers Yodh, Kikkawa and Collings made a significant discovery about the behavior of liquid crystals (LCs) in droplets exposed to a magnetic field. LCs are unique materials that flow like liquids but also have some order (orientational order) like crystals. In this study, the researchers focused on a specific type of LC phase called a nematic. Field-induced “switching” of nematic liquid crystals (NLCs) in planar geometries is the basis of LC displays. Here, NLCs were put in spherical drops with special molecules (surfactants) on the drop surface that align the molecules, or NLC director, perpendicular to the droplet surface and force a topological hedgehog defect to form at the drop center. Field-induced switching in this case differs fundamentally from the planar cells due to confinement geometry and the topological defect.

IRG-2 developed a symmetry-based approach that uses only few inputs, to carry out an efficient yet systematic search for topological magnons in magnetic insulators. Robust against disorders and decoherence, they serve as potential platforms for magnon-based spintronic devices.

Hydrogels with dynamic linkers have garnered intense interest for applications that require flow, including injectable delivery vehicles and 3D bioprinting inks. However, to fully enable these applications, there remains a need to understand how linking chemistry affects gelation and nonlinear rheological properties. To probe this relationship, UT Austin MRSEC researchers developed synthetic multi-arm polyethylene glycol (PEG) gels linked with dynamic covalent bonds.

This unique partnership between Navajo Technical University and the Harvard MRSEC will build enduring pathways for undergraduate Native American students into STEM by including traditional tribal perspectives and methods of scientific inquiry in materials science research and education.

For the first time, a team comprised of two IRG-1 theorists (Birol  and Fernandes) working with experimentalists from other institutions (including  the  Columbia  MRSEC) showed the  coexistence of ferroelectricity (i.e.,  electrostatically switchable macroscopic dipole moment) and superconductivity in a two-dimensional superconductor.