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Program Highlights

2D Semiconductor Electronic Property Tuning via Trifluoromethylation

2D materials offer the opportunity for continued device scaling while avoiding the short-channel effects that hinder bulk semiconductors. Due to their high surface areas, chemical modification is a powerful strategy for tuning the electronic properties of 2D semiconductors, although their dangling-bond-free surfaces present challenges to stable, uniform covalent functionalization. Northwestern University MRSEC IRG-2 has overcome these challenges by electrophilically trifluoromethylating 2D semiconducting WSe2 and MoS2 using the reagent trifluoromethyl thianthrenium triflate.

NSF Big Idea
Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier

Modular Protein Scaffolds Enable Tunable Matrix Materials

Northwestern University IRG-1 has identified novel protein building blocks that form high-aspect ratio structures with genetic-level programmability and tunability. By understanding the biophysics underlying such structural forms, IRG-1 is using these building blocks as key active components in tunable matrix materials such that the material can be mechanically strengthened or weakened upon the addition of a stimulus that impacts these interactions.

NSF Big Idea
Synthetic Materials Biology

Absence of E2g Nematic Instability and Dominant A1g Response in Kagome Metal CsV3Sb5

Electronic nematicity, the spontaneous breaking of crystalline rotational symmetry, has been discovered in several strongly correlated electronic systems, including high Tc superconductors. Recently, several studies have suggested that the charge density wave in the kagome superconductor CsV3Sb5 breaks rotational symmetry—an intriguing possibility, as it would be a rare example of “three-state Potts nematicity,” in which there are three possible orientations in a hexagonal lattice. Here, MRSEC researchers at the University of Washington report that  CsV3Sb5 is probably not nematic, but it is very sensitive to isotropic strain.

NSF Big Idea
Quantum Leap

Ferrimagnetic CuCr2Se4 Nanocrystals with Strong Room-Temperature Magnetic Circular Dichroism

Magnetic materials are vital in technologies from spintronics to biomedicine. Coupling magnetism with optical responses broadens their utility to sensing, magneto-optical memory, and optical isolation.  Chromium chalcogenide spinels display particularly rich magnetism and magneto-optical properties. Colloidal nanocrystals offer routes to solution-processing, heterointegration, and property modulation through size, shape, or heterostructure control, but many chalcogenide spinels have never been synthesized at the nanoscale, and little control over size or morphology has been demonstrated.

NSF Big Idea
Quantum Leap

CAMM Partners with ORNL to Host “Neutron Day”

UTK-MRSEC The Center for Advanced Materials & Manufacturing partnered with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to host the inaugural "Neutron Day," an event designed to deepen collaboration and foster interdisciplinary research connections.

Quantum Materials and Machine Learning Workshop

The recent Quantum Materials and Machine Learning Workshop brought together 22 invited speakers and in total 50 graduate students, postdoc, faculty attendees from 18 different institutions for an intensive exploration of cutting-edge developments at the intersection of quantum physics, materials science, and machine learning. The program featured established researchers alongside three postdoctoral fellows, fostering meaningful dialogue between different career stages.

Peptide ‘Bundlemer’ Building Blocks for New Liquid Crystal Formation

The CHARM team successfully used computational design to produce new, non-natural peptide molecules that self-assemble into discrete nanoparticles that are 2 nm in diameter and 4 nm in length. The new nanoparticles, examples of the class of protein structure call coiled coils, result in exciting new self-assembly behavior with potential to impact materials technology.

FORGES: Foundations of Outreach for Recruitment of Great Engineers & Scientists

CHARM partnered with academic departments and local industry at the University of Delaware to provide experiential exposure to STEM fields, collegiate lab settings, and industry settings and equipment to students historically underrepresented in STEM. Students visited one department or industry partner for one day per week, for 7 weeks.

Hybrid Terahertz Emitter for Pulse Shaping and Chirality Control

The University of Delaware MRSEC team has developed and implemented a hybrid THz radiation source that combines a conventional III-V semiconductor-based photoconductive antenna with a spintronic emitter integrated into a single device. This hybrid emitter leverages the unique properties of both components: the wavelength sensitivity of the semiconductor material and the wavelength insensitivity of the spintronic heterostructure. 

NSF Big Idea
Quantum Leap

IRG-1 Skyrmion Transitions in Co8Zn8Mn4 at Room Temperature

Intellectual merit:  Magnetic skyrmions are topologically-protected spin textures that manifest in certain noncentrosymmetric ferromagnets under the right conditions of temperature and field.

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