Center for Emergent Materials: an NSF MRSEC

 

The Center for Emergent Materials engages researchers from multiple disciplines to work in teams on scientific problems too complex for a single researcher to solve. The CEM, established in 2008, is located at The Ohio State University and funded by a National Science Foundation MRSEC award.


NEWS

We are pleased to announce that after a thorough internal and external review process, 2 Exploratory Materials Research Grants (EMRGs), 3 Multidisciplinary Team Building Grants (MTBGs), and 2 Proto-IRG Grants have been selected to fund exceptionally promising, innovative materials research on campus.

The OSU Materials Research Seed Grant Program (MRSGP) provides internal research funding opportunities designed to achieve the greatest impact for seeding and advancing excellence in materials research of varying scopes. It is jointly funded and managed by the Center for Emergent Materials (CEM), an NSF MRSEC [NSF DMR-2011876], the Center for Exploration of Novel Complex Materials (ENCOMM), and the Institute for Materials and Manufacturing Research (IMR). Congratulations to this year’s awardees!

EMRGs – ($50,000 each) enable nascent and innovative materials research to emerge to the point of being competitive for external funding:

  • “In situ resource utilization with parallel extraction and additive manufacturing of lunar regolith for aluminum alloys”
    PI: Sarah Wolff, Assistant Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering with a joint appointment in Integrated Systems Engineering
    Co-PI: Alan Luo, Donald D. Glower Chair in Engineering, Professor, Materials Science and Engineering, with a joint appointment in Integrated Systems Engineering
  • “Phase-field modeling of morphology evolution at anode/electrolyte interfaces of Li-metal-based all-solid-state batteries”
    PI: Yanzhou Ji, Assistant Professor, Materials Science and Engineering
    Co-PI: Jung Hyun Kim, Associate Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

MTBGs – ($70,000 each) forming multidisciplinary materials research teams that can compete effectively for federal block-funding opportunities, such as the NSF MRSEC program:

  • “Development of Metallic Alloy Anodes for Solid-State Batteries”
    PI: Jung Hyun Kim, Associate Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
    Co-PI: Alan Luo, Donald D. Glower Chair in Engineering, Professor, Materials Science and Engineering, with a joint appointment in Integrated Systems Engineering
  • “Exploring Zeolite Solide State Electrolytes for Potassium Batteries”
    PI: Yiying Wu, Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry
    Co-PI: Nicholas Brunelli, Professor & Ervin G. Bailey Chair in Energy Conversion, Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering
  • “Quantum Twist Microscope”
    PI: Marc Bockrath, Professor, Physics
    Co-PI: Jay Gupta, Professor, Physics

Proto-IRGs – ($100,000 each) forming multidisciplinary materials research teams that can compete effectively for federal block-funding opportunities, such as the NSF MRSEC program:

  • “Transducing conformational dynamics across scales”
    PI: Carlos Castro, Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
    Co-PI: Ralf Bundschuh, Professor, Physics
    Co-PI: Michael Poirier, Professor, Physics
  • “Superconductivity at the Nexus of Magnetism and Ferroelectricity for Quantum Applications”
    PI: Salva Salmani-Rezaie, Assistant Professor, Materials Science and Engineering
    Co-PI: Kaveh Ahadi, Assistant Professor, Materials Science and Engineering
    Co-PI: Jeanie Lau, Professor, Physics
    Co-PI: Nandini Trivedi, Professor, Physics

Feature

CEM’s Professor Brian Skinner was recently highlighted in Quanta Magazine within the article, “Physicists Observe ‘Unobservable’ Quantum Phase Transition” as one of the physicists who first identified the phenomenon.

Check out the article here


Research

Faculty Research Initiative Video Series: Nandini Trivedi

How is a collection of electrons like a society? Nandini Trivedi, professor of physics in the CEM, says in both cases, individuals act differently in a group than they do alone. She studies these interactions in electrons, with an eye to their beneficial practical applications, such as the dissipationless transmission of electricity through superconductivity.

Watch her research video here.