MRS Bulletin Materials News Podcast
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Materials News podcast by MRS Bulletin provides breakthrough news & interviews with researchers on hot topics including biomaterials, quantum materials, artificial intelligence, sustainability, perovskites, and robotics. Produced by the Materials Research Society.
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Jul 28, 2022
Episode 14: Cardiac tissue cellular alignment programmed via bioprinting
In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Sophia Chen interviews graduate student John Ahrens of Harvard University about challenges in bioprinting heart tissue. One challenge in particular is aligning the cells. Heart cells are narrow and rectangular in shape. In a natural heart, they line up in parallel to form aligned filaments. Those aligned filaments are built up into a larger tissue with more complex alignment. Cellular alignment correlates with heart function. The research team has programmed the bioprinter to make tissues that are aligned vertically, in a circular pattern, or in the shape of a chevron. This study is published in Advanced Materials (doi:10.1002/adma.202200217).
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Jul 14, 2022
Episode 13: Control of colloidal shapes may lead to hierarchical materials design
In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Laura Leay interviews Laura Rossi from Delft University of Technology (the Netherlands) and Greg van Anders from the University of Michigan (USA) and Queen’s University (Canada) about advances they’ve made in colloidal preassembly in order to gain control in materials structure at a range of length scales. Through experiments and computer simulation, the researchers showed that particle interaction and particle shape can be decoupled through spherical confinement, which – when clustered – assembled differently than those observed in bulk assembly. This work was published in a recent issue of Science Advances (doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abm0548).
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Jul 8, 2022
Episode 12: Compact optical system achieves achromatic focusing
In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Sophia Chen interviews Adam Kubec at Swiss startup XRNanotech and research team member Marie-Christine Zdora of the Paul Scherrer Institut about their proof-of-principle of an x-ray achromatic lens. The lens consist of a focusing diffractive and a defocusing refractive optical element that achieves imaging of a range of wavelengths without having to move the sample. The researchers used two different diffractive lenses, one made from nickel and one with gold. To fabricate the refractive lens, they used a nanoscale 3D printing technique known as two-photon polymerization. This work was published in a recent issue of Nature Communications (doi:10.1038/s41467-022-28902-8).
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Jun 15, 2022
Episode 11: Implantable bioelectronics utilizes ionic communication system
In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Stephen Riffle interviews Jennifer Gelinas, an assistant professor in the Department of Neurology and Institute for Genomic Medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, and Dion Khodagholy, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University, about their ionic communication system for implantable devices. The system involves building a capacitor using water ions and biomolecules. With the placement of two conducting electrodes in the body and introduction of an alternating current, the tissue between the electrode will act as an electrolyte medium. Together, these two electrodes and their electrolyte medium form a capacitor that is capable of generating a detectable electrical field. The ionic communication device is fabricated with materials that have already been shown to be safe in the body, such as gold and a semiconducting plastic—poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)–polystyrenesulfonate or PEDOT:PSS. This work was published in a recent issue of Science Advances (doi:10.1126/sciadv.abm7851).
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Jun 7, 2022
Episode 10: Gallium-based liquid metal manipulated without physical contact
In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Laura Leay interviews Michael Dickey from North Carolina State University about his work manipulating liquid gallium. When submerged in an aqueous solution, liquid gallium will form a sphere. When fed by gravity through a thin nozzle that is surrounded by aqueous solution, it will instead flow into the shape of a wire. Passing an electrical current through the liquid metal wire means that a magnetic field is created, which means the wire can be shaped using external magnets, following the Lorentz force. This research was published in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (doi:10.1073/pnas.2117535119).
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Jun 1, 2022
Episode 9: Semi-transparent organic PV achieves dual function
In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Laura Leay interviews Yang Yang and Yepin Zhao of the University of California, Los Angeles about a dual-function p-type soft interlayer they developed to enhance efficiency of charge transfer in organic solar cells. With the introduction of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) as the p-type material, the researchers are able to improve the efficiency of the device as well as change its optical distribution. One goal for such a device, they say, is to create a greenhouse that generates its own electricity. This study is published in ACS Nano (doi:10.1021/acsnano.1c09018).
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May 6, 2022
Episode 8: Water vapor plasma bonds gold electrodes for flexible electronics
In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Sophia Chen interviews Kenjiro Fukuda from RIKEN in Japan and Masahito Takakuwa of Waseda University about a technique to connect integrated electronics while maintaining their flexibility. They demonstrated the method on two gold electrodes. To make the two pieces of gold bond, the researchers treated the gold with water vapor plasma. The researchers used this technique to electrically connect the gold electrodes of an organic photovoltaic to an organic light-emitting diode without adding significant thickness, thereby ensuring the flexibility of the device. This study is published in Science Advances (doi:10.1126/sciadv.abl6228).
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Apr 27, 2022
Episode 7: Tunable biomimetic hydrogel informs cell behavior
In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Stephen Riffle interviews Samuel Herberg from SUNY upstate medical university in Syracuse, New York about a new tool to study cell behavior. According to Herberg, culturing cells in an environment that reflects the materials properties of the human body can help reveal new insights into cell biology and mechanisms of disease. To do that, his research team has created a hydrogel using natural polymers. Through UV and chemically induced crosslinking, Herberg’s team is able to finely tune their hydrogel’s stiffness, which enables them to study diseases like primary open angle glaucoma, the world’s leading cause of vision loss. Their study is published in Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology (doi: 10.3389/fcell.2022.844342).
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Apr 19, 2022
Episode 6: Embedded sensor pinpoints stress inside batteries
In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Laura Leay interviews PhD candidate Laura Albero Blanquer and her professor, Jean-Marie Tarascon, from the Collège de France in Paris about their study on what occurs inside the cells of both liquid and solid-state batteries. They embedded the optical Fiber Bragg grating sensor that reflects monochromatic light, revealing a shift in the peak wavelength when there is a change in temperature, pressure, or stress. The sensors were calibrated so that only changes in stress could be detected. This research will lead to new opportunities to look at commercial liquid cells, and to greater insight into the chemo-mechanical processes in electrodes and in all solid-state batteries, which could lead to enhanced performance. Their study is published in Nature Communications (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28792-w).
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Apr 4, 2022
Episode 5: Small molecule structure uncovered via femtosecond-crystallography & algorithm
In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Laura Leay interviews Nate Hohman from The University of Connecticut about the structure of two chalcogenolates his group uncovered. By combining serial femtosecond crystallography —usually used to characterize large molecules—and a clique algorithm, Hohman’s group was able to analyze the structure of small molecules. With serial femtosecond crystallography, large molecules like proteins produce thousands of spots on the detector; in contrast, small molecule crystals only a produce a few spots. The algorithm uses the pattern that the spots make on the detector to determine the orientation of as many crystals in the liquid jet as possible. The data from each crystal can then be merged together to find the structure.
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Mar 18, 2022
Episode 4: Meet research team member SARA
In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Sophia Chen interviews Carla Gomes, Michael Thompson, and Max Amsler of Cornell University about their robot, SARA—Scientific Autonomous Reasoning Agent. Unlike commonly known artificial intelligence (AI) applications such as the neural networks that enable image recognition, SARA performs within a closed loop system through a type of AI known as active learning, which allows the system to reason without a lot of training data. Within 30 minutes, SARA figured out how to make delta phase bismuth oxide and cool it to room temperature, saving the research team two full days of experiments.
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Feb 14, 2022
Episode 3: “Water-shocked” wood becomes moldable
In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin's Prachi Patel interviews Liangbing Hu of the University of Maryland on research to mold and shape wood — a low-cost, sustainable material. Beginning with basswood, Hu's laboratory removed some of the lignin and fully dried this hardwood. As the wood dries, the cell walls contract. Wood also has hollow fibers and open channels, called vessels, all of which close up as the material dries. The wood is then shocked with water, leaving it with partially open vessels and closely packed fibers. The cells walls expand rapidly and take on an accordion-like wrinkled structure. These wrinkles, and the space created by the partially open vessels, allow the wood to be compressed and stretched, and the closely packed fibers give it enough strength to bend.
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Feb 7, 2022
Episode 2: Glasses found denser than the supercooled liquid
In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin's Sophia Chen interviews Zahra Fakhraai of the University of Pennsylvania on her group's research to better understand how a substance condenses into glass. They studied the liquid–liquid phase transition in vapor-deposited thin films of N,N0-bis(3-methylphenyl)-N,N0-diphenylbenzidine (TPD). They discovered a new high-density supercooled liquid phase in glasses deposited in the thickness range of 25-55 nm. Their findings could lead to more precise theoretical descriptions of glasses.
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Jan 11, 2022
Episode 1: Self-healing concrete relies on enzyme-driven mechanism
In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin's Sophia Chen interviews Nima Rahbar of Worcester Polytechnic Institute on the use of an enzyme, carbonic anhydrase, that initiates self-healing in concrete. The enzyme catalyzes calcium in the cement to react with carbon dioxide from the air to form crystals of calcite, which repairs cracks. Rahbar's research group has demonstrated how the material can heal millimeter-wide cracks. Ubiquitous concrete is responsible for 8% of human-made greenhouse gases, including that used in the repair of existing structures. Rahbar's work is expected to help reduce concrete's carbon footprint, while also speeding up the self-healing compared to the previously used bacteria-based methods.
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Oct 11, 2021
Episode 4: CareGum stretches, conducts electricity, and heals itself
Omar Fabian: It’s summer and film director James Cameron has just dropped another scorching hit. In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, we find mother-son duo Sarah and John Connor running for their lives, and for the lives of all humankind, with the help of a bad cyborg turned good played by none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger. There are so many undoubtedly cool visual features to take away from this iconic film. Little known fact: it actually won four Academy awards for its sound and visual effects. But if you ask around, more than likely, you’ll find that the coolest has to be the T-1000: the liquid-metal robot sent from the future to destroy John Connor and ensure victory for our machine overlords.
Alireza Dolatshahi-Pirouz: You have this robot that, it’s not electronic but it’s still a robot and it’s because somehow that material that made it is self-healing and it’s animated in some ways that we couldn’t understand back then.
[OF]: That’s Alireza Dolatshahi-Pirouz, a…
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Sep 14, 2021
Episode 3: Desirée Plata: Functionalization of CNTs with heteroatoms
Markus Buehler of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and editor of the Impact section of MRS Bulletin interviews Desirée Plata, the Gilbert W. Winslow Career Development Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT about her group’s development of new methods toward functionalization of carbon nanotubes with heteroatoms, which enables covalent attachment, opening up a world of potential materials structures. This research is relevant because common functionalization techniques for carbon nanotube materials (and other, similar nanostructures) are often hazardous, and have adverse environmental impacts, and lack precision. The research group evaluated an in situ functionalization technique utilizing oxygen-containing alkyne precursors, which offers a novel, more sustainable pathway for bottom-up engineering. Through a detailed assessment of the mechanisms by which nanotubes form, the researchers were able to direct new pathways toward bottom-up design…
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Mar 24, 2021
Episode 2: Gao and Ni on a deep learning method to predict elastic modulus field
MRS Bulletin’s Impact editor Markus Buehler interviews Huajian Gao of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and Bo Ni of Brown University on their development of a deep learning method to predict the elastic modulus field based on strain data that may be the result of an experiment. The method is highly efficient and offers real-time solutions to problems that usually require complex numerical methods that rely on variational methods to solve elasticity problems, like finite element analysis. This type of approach may change the way researchers interpret experimental data. See the article “A deep learning approach to the inverse problem of modulus identification in elasticity” (doi:10.1557/mrs.2020.231).
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Feb 10, 2021
Episode 1: Cherie Kagan, 2021 MRS President, on the MRS governance structure
In an interview with Gopal Rao from MRS Bulletin, Cherie Kagan, the 2021 President of the Materials Research Society, discusses changes in the MRS Governance structure that provides greater engagement and empowerment of both volunteers and staff in alignment with the MRS mission. Changes include fewer committees but more “time bound” task forces and an independent nominating committee where MRS looks at the opportunity in this structure to create greater diversity in the leadership of the Society to serve the MRS membership.
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Nov 24, 2020
Episode 14: David Morse on Corning R&D in materials science
As part of the MRS Communications 10th Anniversary event, Gopal Rao, Chief Editor for Technical Content at MRS, interviews David Morse, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Corning, about research, development, and innovations at Corning. They discuss Corning’s contributions to addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, the company’s latest version of Gorilla glass, and Corning’s R&D efforts in ceramics as well as the role of industrial R&D labs in the research enterprise.
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Nov 24, 2020
Episode 13: Julia Greer: From ion to atom to dendrite
Markus Buehler of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and editor of the Impact section of MRS Bulletin interviews Julia Greer, director of the Kavli Nanoscience Institute at the California Institute of Technology about her research on the formation and nanomechanical behavior of electrodeposited lithium for Li-ion batteries. Greer’s group developed an in situ experimental methodology that allows them to electrochemically charge small-scale battery cells and to observe, in real-time, the formation of Li dendrites and to probe their mechanical response. Their work is published in MRS Bulletin (doi:10.1557/mrs.2020.148)
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Oct 27, 2020
Episode 12: Markus Buehler on de novo protein design
Gopal Rao, chief editor for technical content, interviews Markus Buehler of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and editor of the Impact section of MRS Bulletin about his research on designing new proteins. Buehler’s group trains a deep learning model whose architecture is composed of several long short-term memory units from data consisting of musical representations of proteins classified by certain features. Their work is published in APL Bioengineering (doi:10.1063/1.5133026).
Markus Buehler is also the editor of the new Impact section of MRS Bulletin, that publishes new research: www.mrs.org/impact.
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Sep 14, 2020
Episode 11: Materials research & COVID-19
Materials science and engineering has an important role to play in overcoming the current COVID-19 pandemic. Listen to Science Writer Philip Ball talk with three materials researchers, Catherine Fromen (University of Delaware), Thomas Webster (Northeastern University), and George Stylios (Heriott-Watt University, Edinburgh) about their work in different aspects of materials science to mitigate the pandemic. They cover various aspects, including drug delivery for immune engineering for COVID-19, the use of nanoparticles to directly target the virus, vaccines and materials connections, and how materials play a critical role in face mask technologies. For more on this subject, see MRS Bulletin, "The quest for materials solutions to the coronavirus pandemic," by Philip Ball.
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Sep 1, 2020
Episode 10: Vinayak Dravid & Vikas Nandwana on the OHM smart sponge
Vinayak Dravid, the Abraham Harris Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University and with Vikas Nandwana, who is co-founder and CTO of MFNS Tech, introduce the oleophilic, hydrophobic, and magnetic (OHM) sponge. The OHM smart sponge was awarded 3rd place in the iMatSci Innovation Showcase competition at the 2019 MRS Fall meeting. For more information, see Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research (doi:10.1021/acs.iecr.0c01493).
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Aug 17, 2020
Episode 9: Rigoberto C. Advincula on additive manufacturing for COVID-19
Rigoberto C. Advincula of the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Editor in Chief of MRS Communications, discusses the role of materials and additive manufacturing on the personal protective equipment (PPE) supply chain during the new coronavirus pandemic. For more information, see “Additive Manufacturing for COVID-19: Devices, Materials, Prospects and Challenges,” MRS Communications.
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Apr 29, 2020
Episode 8: Atomic defects form quantum emitters in hBN
Sophia Chen of MRS Bulletin interviews Jennifer Dionne from Stanford University about the origin of photonic emissions in the quantum material hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). Read the article in Nature Materials.
Transcript
SOPHIA CHEN: Many researchers are hotly anticipating quantum technology, a new paradigm that exploits the mathematics of quantum mechanics. But researchers are still developing the so-called quantum materials to build these devices and connect them in a future quantum internet. Jennifer Dionne, a materials scientist at Stanford University, is investigating one such material called hBN, or hexagonal boron nitride. hBN could be useful for quantum machines because it can be made to emit single photons of light to compute and transmit information. When you illuminate hBN with light the material will emit a spectrum of colors ranging from the red to the green. Dionne’s team wanted to understand what microscopic property or defect in the material was responsible for the…
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Apr 14, 2020
Episode 7: Microneedle array key to deliver vaccine against COVID-19
Sophia Chen of MRS Bulletin interviews Stephen Balmert of the University of PIttsburgh about a patch delivery method of a vaccine to counter COVID-19. Read the article in EBioMedicine.
Transcript
CHEN: To prevent the spread of Covid-19 in the long term, we will almost certainly need a vaccine against the disease. Stephen Balmert, a biomedical engineer from the University of Pittsburgh, is part of an international collaboration that has made such a candidate vaccine for Covid-19. They’ve tested their vaccine in mice and gotten promising results.
BALMERT: I think everybody really wants to know, when is this going to be in humans? We’re putting together [a form] to get approval from the FDA to begin a clinical trial.
SC: Under the microscope, the pathogen resembles a sphere adorned with spikes, known as spike proteins. Balmert’s vaccine is made of these spike proteins. To produce the spike, they introduce the genetic instructions for making the proteins into human embryonic kidney…
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Mar 30, 2020
Episode 6: Catalyst design speeds up CO2 conversion to carbon products
Sophia Chen of MRS Bulletin interviews Pelayo Garcia de Arquer of the University of Toronto in Canada about a catalyst-ionomer architecture his group designed to quickly convert CO2 into useful hydrocarbons. Read the abstract in Science.
Transcript
SOPHIA CHEN: The challenge for the world to reduce carbon emissions is steep. To reduce these emissions in the long run, some scientists believe it will be necessary to extract carbon dioxide from the air. But once you extract all that carbon dioxide, what do you do with it? Pelayo Garcia de Arquer, a materials scientist at the University of Toronto in Canada, has a potential answer. He’s working on technology for converting carbon dioxide into useful hydrocarbons, such as plastics, fabrics and fuels that are now produced by the petrochemical industry. In other words, he’s trying to turn lemons into lemonade.
PELAYO GARCIA DE ARQUER: Our approach is to decarbonize this process by taking existing CO2 in the atmosphere, in the exhaust of…
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Mar 16, 2020
Episode 5: Coupled-QD system in graphene reveals puzzling charging patterns
Sophia Chen of MRS Bulletin interviews Dan Walkup of the National Institute of Standards and Technlogy about an unusual concentric quantum dot structure created in graphene. Read the abstract in Physical Review B .
Transcript
SOPHIA CHEN: Physicist Dan Walkup has a mystery on his hands. Working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland, his team has engineered a strange phenomenon in the 2D material graphene using a scanning tunneling microscope, or STM. They created the phenomenon by accident playing around with the STM, whose very sharp tip manipulates single atoms on a material. In the graphene it created a quantum dot (QD).
DAN WALKUP: Historically we weren’t trying to study coupled QDs per se. We were trying to figure out how to tune the properties of the graphene with STM tip. In that way we came eventually to this QD study.
SC: You can visualize the QD as an island in the graphene, where electric charges are confined and isolated from th…
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Feb 27, 2020
Episode 4: Toxic bromate removed from drinking water
Sophia Chen of MRS Bulletin interviews Tina Škorjanc, a PhD student at New York University in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, and her professor Dinesh Shetty at Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, about porphyrin–based covalent organic frameworks they developed that remove the toxic substance bromate from drinking water. Read the article in Chemical Science.
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SOPHIA CHEN: Drinking water: Whether it’s out of the tap, the refrigerator, or a bottle, we expect it to be clean. Water treatment plants oblige, with a complicated sequence of filtration and purification processes. During a last purification step, the treatment plants add ozone to disinfect the water. The ozone removes odor, color, and taste, and it does this all quickly. But a potential dangerous side effect of the ozone turns harmless, naturally occurring bromine ions in the water into the toxic substance bromate. Tina Škorjanc, a PhD student at New York University in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, is…
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Feb 13, 2020
Episode 3: E.coli evolved to eat CO2
Sophia Chen of MRS Bulletin interviews Ron Milo of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel about a strain of E. coli his team developed that generates all its biomass from carbon dioxide. Their work was achieved through a technique called adaptive laboratory evolution, that is, evolutionary selection. Read the article in Cell.
Transcript
SOPHIA CHEN: Inside a lab at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, biologist Ron Milo and his team have engineered a strain of E.coli with an unusual diet. Natural E.coli is a heterotroph, meaning that it can only consume organic carbon compounds—like glucose. But Milo’s team converted the bacteria into an autotroph, an organism such as a plant that can consume inorganic carbon. They essentially changed the bacteria’s metabolic process.
RON MILO: What we did in this study is show that we could take an organism of the second type, a heterotroph, in this case E.coli, that is used to having its diet coming from glucose in the media, and…
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Jan 29, 2020
Episode 2: AI steers autonomous x-ray scattering experiments
Prachi Patel of MRS Bulletin interviews Kevin Yager and Masafumi Fukuto of Brookhaven National Laboratory about an artificial intelligence algorithm they designed that analyzes data and then decides what should be measured next. In their first autonomous experiment, the researchers used x-ray scattering to map the boundaries of a droplet where nanoparticles segregate. Read the article in Scientific Reports.
PRACHI PATEL: Discovering new materials takes an enormous amount of time. You make a material, measure its properties, analyze the data, and then repeat the process all over again. Automation has sped things up. But now scientists have made this automation smarter. In a recent paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers presented an artificial intelligence algorithm that can analyze data and then decide what to measure next. Here’s Kevin Yager, a scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
KEVIN YAGER: I think its important to make a distinction between autom…
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Jan 13, 2020
Episode 1: Strain engineering guided by machine learning
Omar Fabián of MRS Bulletin interviews Ju Li of Massachusetts Institute of Technology about applying machine learning to elastic strain engineering of semiconductor materials at the nanoscale. The research team presents a framework for guiding strain engineering whereby materials properties and performance could be designed. Read the article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Transcript
OMAR FABIÁN: There are innumerable ways to alter a material’s properties. For crystalline materials it comes down to lattice structure, to the shape of the unit cell. That’s the key to unlocking new macroscopic properties from the same old material.
JU LI: We think we know silicon…But what is interesting is if you put 5% tension on silicon or 5% shear that becomes a different material.
OF: That’s Prof. Ju Li, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, talking about elastic strain engineering.
JL: This is not, you know, you take a piece of metal and you can bend…
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Dec 18, 2019
Episode 24: Gold nanoparticles modify electrical behavior inside living cells
Sophia Chen of MRS Bulletin interviews Frankie Rawson of the University of Nottingham, UK, about wirelessly manipulating the electrical behavior of living cells. His research group does so by applying an external voltage to Au nanoparticles inserted into the cell. The voltage causes a molecule attached to each Au nanoparticle to undergo a redox reaction, in which atoms give up or accept electrons from each other. Read the abstract in Applied Nano Materials.
Transcript
SOPHIA CHEN: Tiny electrical currents flow in many parts of the human body. For example, ions moving inside cells or crossing cell membranes. Many instances of these electrical currents occur because of a type of chemical reaction in the cell known as a redox reaction, in which atoms give up or accept electrons from each other.
FRANKIE RAWSON: Ultimately, redox reactions underpin how cells make energy.
SC: Frankie Rawson is a bioengineer at the University of Nottingham in the UK. He’s designing materials that can be p…
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Nov 21, 2019
Episode 23: Spin-triplet superconductivity discovered in uranium ditelluride
Sophia Chen of MRS Bulletin interviews Nicholas Butch of the National Institute of Standards and Technology about the evidence of topological states found in UTe2. These could possibly function as topological qubits, a favorable “hardware” for quantum computers that should not require error correction. Read the article in Science.
Transcript
SOPHIA CHEN: Recently, you may have heard that Google’s quantum computer executed an algorithm a billion times faster than a conventional computer. But their machine is far from being broadly useful. No existing quantum computer is. One of the biggest challenges that the technology faces is that the computer hardware—its so-called qubits—interacts with the environment in unwanted ways. This results in computing errors, and no one knows how to correct these errors yet. That’s why researchers are investigating new materials for building qubits that might avoid these errors altogether. Nicholas Butch, a physicist at the National Institute…
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Nov 21, 2019
Episode 22: NV center qubits engineered optically for quantum computers
Sophia Chen of MRS Bulletin interviews Jason Smith of the University of Oxford about using ultrashort pulse laser processing to engineer nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond that can then perform as qubits in quantum computers. Read the article in Optica.
Transcript
SOPHIA CHEN: Quantum computers promise to be much faster than conventional computers at solving certain problems, such as in chemistry and machine learning. But it’s still unclear what material to build them from. One promising candidate is a type of synthetic diamond containing an impurity known as a nitrogen vacancy center, or NV center. These impurities consist of a nitrogen atom and a vacancy, next to each other, inside a lattice of carbon atoms. Jason Smith, a materials scientist at the University of Oxford, explains how the defects would work as quantum bits, or qubits.
JASON SMITH: When you put these two defects next to each other, the nitrogen and the vacancy, they form a stable complex called the NV center, and t…
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Oct 29, 2019
Episode 21: Cold fusion revisited
Philip Ball of MRS Bulletin interviews Yet-Ming Chiang of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about their Google-sponsored elaborate study on cold fusion. The investigations have provided new insights into highly hydrided metals and low-energy nuclear reactions, with much interesting science yet to be explored. Read the multi-authored Perspective in Nature.
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Oct 15, 2019
Episode 20: Research highlights: Perovskites
Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill stabilize solar cells by converting the surfaces of lead halide perovskites to water-insoluble lead oxysalt, as reported in Science. Researchers at Weizmann Institute of Science open a new path to defect management in materials by providing insight into the low defect density of halide perovskites, as reported in Materials Horizon. Researchers at the University of Oxford add ionic liquids to perovskites which markedly improves the devices’ long-term stability, as reported in Nature. Researchers at Kyushu University make exceptionally thick organic light-emitting diodes by combining thin organic light-emitting films with hybrid perovskite charge-transport layers, as reported in Nature.
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Sep 19, 2019
Episode 19: Polymer grown on liquid metal nanodroplets
Prachi Patel of MRS Bulletin interviews Carmel Majidi of Carnegie Mellon University about utilizing atom transfer radical polymerization to create liquid metal–polymer hybrid materials with high stability, excellent dispersibility, and tunable mechanical and optical properties. Read the article in Nature Nanotechnology.
Transcript
PATEL: Rubbers and plastics have snuck into hundreds of products we use every day. They have excellent mechanical properties for these applications. But they are terrible at transporting heat and electricity. That’s a problem if you are an engineer who’s trying to make soft robots or artificial skin, like Carmel Majidi of Carnegie Mellon University. He is trying to create new kinds of composites by tailoring the electrical and thermal properties of polymers. He and his colleagues recently found a way to do this by filling polymers with nanoscale droplets made of liquid metals.
MAJIDI: And the liquid metal itself is an alloy of gallium and indium. Thes…
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Sep 11, 2019
Episode 18: Organic high-spin material conducive for quantum computing
Sophia Chen of MRS Bulletin interviews Jason Azoulay of the University of Southern Mississippi about his conjugated polymer semiconductor, a promising candidate for technologies that integrate both conventional electronics and spintronics. Read the article in Science Advances.
Transcript
SOPHIA CHEN: Conventional electronics like your smartphone or computer use the voltage and current of electrons in a material to encode and transmit information. Spintronics aims to exploit the quantum spin of those electrons as an additional signal. Jason Azoulay of the University of Southern Mississippi, develops materials that might be useful for spintronics combined with conventional electronics.
JASON AZOULAY: People are looking at controlling electron correlations and spin and magnetism for emerging types of technologies. There’s a wide variety of technologies, whether it’s something as far off as quantum computing or new types of magnetic materials, or even multifunctional activities where…
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Aug 26, 2019
Episode 17: Lead-halide perovskites make effective catalysts for organic synthesis
Research on perovskites has progressed rapidly for PV and LEDs, with new solar-cell efficiency records being set at a regular pace. There are hints of the first commercial products reaching the market by 2020, just a decade since perovskite photovoltaics were first discovered. MRS Bulletin presents the impact of a recent advance in this burgeoning field.
Read the abstract in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (doi:10.1021/jacs.8b08720).
Transcript
Welcome to MRS Bulletin’s Materials News Podcast, providing breakthrough news & interviews with researchers on the hot topics of 3D bioprinting, artificial intelligence and machine learning, bioelectronics, perovskites, quantum materials, robotics, and synthetic biology. My name is Bob Braughler.
While lead-halide perovskites have revolutionized photovoltaics, they have also shown promise for lasers, light-emitting diodes, and transistors. Now, researchers show that perovskite nanocrystals are also highly effective catalysts fo…
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Aug 16, 2019
Episode 16: Thermoelectrics enables clothes with adjustable temperature
Sophia Chen of MRS Bulletin interviews Renkun Chen of the University of California, San Diego about his flexible thermoelectric devices that can provide personalized cooling and heating effects in clothing. Read the article in Science Advances.
Transcript
Transcript
SOPHIA CHEN: If you’ve ever had to pay an air conditioning bill during the summer, you know how expensive it gets. Renkun Chen is a mechanical engineer at UCSD with an energy-saving idea: clothes with adjustable temperature. He and his team have designed and fabricated a material you can wear that directly cools the skin.
RENKUN CHEN: Instead of having a centralized air conditioning system in a building, where you need to cool down a large volume of space for building occupants, we use our system to cool down a much smaller volume at a personal level. By doing so, we can save energy by at least an order of magnitude.
SC: The power consumption per person of a conventional AC system is a few kilowatts, he says. Whereas p…
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Aug 7, 2019
Episode 15: 3D stretchable electronics achieves ultrahigh conductivity
Prachi Patel of MRS Bulletin interviews Benjamin C.-K. Tee of the National University of Singapore about an interfacial design for stretchable electronics that uses three-dimensional helical copper micro-interconnects embedded in an elastic rubber substrate. Read the article in APL Materials.
Transcript
PRACHI PATEL: Metals are excellent at conducting electricity but not the best at being stretched or bent. For electronics that can be worn or wrapped around curved surfaces, stretchable conductors are key.
BENJAMIN TEE: One good example is a smart patch that you can wear to record your heartbeat, or your ECG and so on.
PATEL: That’s Benjamin Tee at the National University of Singapore. He and his colleagues have come up with a new way to make stretchable conductors that stay strong and remain highly conductive when stretched to almost twice their length. Their strategy overcomes two main challenges of previous stretchable conductors.
TEE: So one approach to make stretchable conduct…
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Jul 22, 2019
Episode 14: Thin film patterns classified by machine learning
Sophia Chen of MRS Bulletin interviews Alex Hexemer of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, and Daniela Ushizima and Shuai Liu of the University of California, Berkeley about their design of multiple Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) to classify nanoparticle orientation in a thin film by learning scattering patterns. Read the article in MRS Communications.
Transcript
SOPHIA CHEN: Materials researchers come from around the world to study their samples in the beamline at the Advanced Light Source facility, located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Alex Hexemer, a senior scientist at the facility, tells me that they’re currently upgrading the machine, so that it can take much more data, much more quickly.
HEXEMER: The amount of data you’re going to create is so large that A, you can’t take it home on a hard drive anymore, nor can you start looking at the data anymore. It’s just too big. Some of the detectors here are going to run at thous…
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Jul 2, 2019
Episode 13: Tendril-like robot inspired by plants
Sophia Chen of MRS Bulletin interviews Barbara Mazzolai and Edoardo Sinibaldi of the Italian Institute of Technology about their robot made from two types of polymers, enabling it to extend and retract like the tendrils of a plant. Read the article in Nature Communications.
Transcript
SOPHIA CHEN: Barbara Mazzolai is designing robots inspired by plants. Recently, she and her research team at the Italian Institute of Technology have made a robot that looks like a plant tendril, similar to the ones that ivy plants might use to climb a trellis. She says they want to develop a robot that can explore an unknown area just like a plant does.
BARBARA MAZZOLAI: Plants could be the model to develop the robot for a very harsh environment, for colonizing a very difficult environment, to explore a harsh situation. Tendril is one of the ways, one of the strategies that they use to anchor the body.
CHEN: The robot doesn’t just look like a plant tendril. It also moves according to the same mechan…
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Jun 25, 2019
Episode 12: Europium thwarts reactivity in metal-halide perovskite solar cells
Research on perovskites has progressed rapidly for PV and LEDs, with new solar-cell efficiency records being set at a regular pace. There are hints of the first commercial products reaching the market by 2020, just a decade since perovskite photovoltaics were first discovered. MRS Bulletin presents the impact of a recent advance in this burgeoning field. Read the abstract in Science (doi:10.1126/science.aau5701).
Transcript
Welcome to MRS Bulletin’s Materials News Podcast, providing breakthrough news & interviews with researchers on the hot topics of 3D bioprinting, artificial intelligence and machine learning, bioelectronics, perovskites, quantum materials, robotics, and synthetic biology. My name is Bob Braughler.
Metal-halide perovskite solar cells degrade when exposed to oxygen and moisture. Encapsulating the devices makes them more stable and long-lasting, but it does not solve one issue that crops up during regular device operation. Light, electric field, and thermal stress c…
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Jun 12, 2019
Episode 11: Nanoparticle megalibraries enable materials discovery
Prachi Patel of MRS Bulletin interviews Chad Mirkin of Northwestern University about the use of his polymer pen lithography technique combined with an ink spray-coating method to ultimately create a megalibrary of nanoparticles that speeds up the discovery of new materials. Read the abstract in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Transcript
PATEL: Mirkin and his colleagues are trying to dramatically speed up materials discovery. They have created a tool: a “megalibrary.” It’s an array of millions of little nanoparticles that fits on a microscope slide. Each nanoparticle has a different structure and composition.
CM: We’ve made libraries with as many as 5 billion particles and a million different variants, compositional and size variants.
PP: They make the libraries using a technique called polymer pen lithography. They use hundreds of thousands of tiny, sharp tips to deposit dots of polymer on the slide. Each dot is a little reactor, loaded with different…
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May 7, 2019
Episode 10: Protein-based polymer achieves green electronics
Omar Fabián of MRS Bulletin interviews Alireza Dolatshahi-Pirouz of the Technical University of Denmark about the use of silk to fabricate eco-friendly electronics. Read the article in Advanced Science.
Transcript
FABIÁN: We have an electronic waste problem. While the development of recyclable plastics has helped curb that problem, currently only about 15% of e-waste is actually recycled. So how can we make a bigger dent? Materials researchers from Denmark are looking to the silkworm for answers.
ALIREZA DOLATSHAHI-PIROUZ: Who can do it better than Mother Nature, right?
FABIÁN: That’s Prof. Alireza Dolatshahi-Pirouz. His research team at the Technical University of Denmark is developing a new class of thin-film electronics they’ve dubbed “fleco-ionics.” That’s short for flexible, eco-friendly electronics. And they’re doing it using cocoons woven by silkworms.
DOLATSHAHI-PIROUZ: Silk is one of the strongest materials out there. It has strength that is many times stron…
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May 3, 2019
Episode 9: E-skin detects direction of applied pressure
Sophia Chen of MRS Bulletin interviews Zhenan Bao of Stanford University about her research team’s development of a biomimetic soft electronic skin (e-skin) composed of an array of capacitors capable of effectively measuring and discriminating shear force in real time. Read the abstract in Science Robotics.
CHEN: Zhenan Bao is a professor at Stanford University whose research team developed this robot. She says the key design of the robot is a network of force sensors on its fingertip that tell the robot when to retract.
BAO: Without sensor feedback, the robot would not know how much it can press on an object before it should stop.
CHEN: They’ve also shown that the robot can respond to feedback to place a ping-pong ball into an arrangement of different round holes. She says that this type of tactile robot could be useful in all sorts of situations.
BAO: Any robot that will need to have the ability to manipulate objects and being in contact with objects will need this type of se…
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Apr 19, 2019
Episode 8: Ge added to lead-free perovskite improves efficiency
Research on perovskites has progressed rapidly for PV and LEDs, with new solar-cell efficiency records being set at a regular pace. There are hints of the first commercial products reaching the market by 2020, just a decade since perovskite photovoltaics were first discovered. MRS Bulletin presents the impact of a recent advance in this burgeoning field.
Read the article in Nature Communications (doi:10.1038/s41467-018-07951-y).
Transcript
Welcome to MRS Bulletin’s Materials News Podcast, providing breakthrough news & interviews with researchers on the hot topics of 3D bioprinting, artificial intelligence and machine learning, bioelectronics, perovskites, quantum materials, robotics, and synthetic biology. My name is Bob Braughler.
The presence of lead in state-of-the-art perovskite solar cells could hold back their commercialization. Lead-free alternatives based on tin compounds have shown promise, but they typically suffer from low efficiency and stability.
Brown University’s…
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Apr 12, 2019
Episode 7: Synthetic biology exploited to neutralize mustard gas
Sophia Chen of MRS Bulletin interviews Jared DeCoste, a researcher with the US army, about the research team's work to counter the effect of mustard gas. First, the researchers alter E. coli’s DNA to produce an abundance of the molecule protoporphyrin IX. They then mix the protoporphyrin IX with another type of molecule called a metal-organic framework, which then behaves like an absorbent microscopic sponge that detoxifies sulfur mustard, or mustard gas. Read the abstract in MRS Communications (doi: 10.1557/mrc.2019.22).
Transcript
SOPHIA CHEN: Today we’re talking about new research out of the military on sulfur mustard, or as it’s more commonly known: mustard gas. Researchers are wondering, could you make some sort of clothing protection for a soldier that basically neutralizes the chemical upon contact? Jared DeCoste is a researcher with the US Army developing these smart uniforms.
JARED DECOSTE: We’re doing a lot of research in this area, and we’re excited about the way…
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Mar 25, 2019
Episode 6: Chlorine boosts efficiency of tandem solar cell
Research on perovskites has progressed rapidly for PV and LEDs, with new solar-cell efficiency records being set at a regular pace. There are hints of the first commercial products reaching the market by 2020, just a decade since perovskite photovoltaics were first discovered. MRS Bulletin presents the impact of a recent advance in this burgeoning field.
Read the abstract in Nature Energy (doi:10.1038/s41560-018-0278-x).
Transcript
Welcome to MRS Bulletin’s Materials News Podcast, providing breakthrough news & interviews with researchers on the hot topics of 3D bioprinting, artificial intelligence and machine learning, bioelectronics, perovskites, quantum materials, robotics, and synthetic biology. My name is Bob Braughler.
Researchers have made an all-perovskite tandem solar cell with a record high power-conversion efficiency of 21%.
Tandem solar cells are more efficient than a single cell because each device in the stack can be tailored to absorb a different part of the light s…
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Mar 11, 2019
Episode 5: Artificial neuron made from VO2
An artificial neuron made from vanadium dioxide precisely mimics the behavior of normal and faulty neurons in the brain. This could have important implications for neuroscience. Read the abstract in Frontiers in Neuroscience.
Transcript
PATEL: Our brains conduct information through electrical signals. Little voltage spikes that neurons pass around. And the frequency of those little spikes encodes information. But disorders like depression or ADHD can weaken these signals or alter their frequency. Here’s Shriram Ramanathan at Purdue University, with a materials engineer’s take.
SHRIRAM RAMANATHAN: Basically you can think of the neuron as a material that integrates charge. So imagine the neuron is collecting charge as it receives charge. And then at some critical charge level it fires a signal. So this can be referred to as a leaky integrate fire function. So the neuron is integrating charge but it’s not a perfect insulator so it leaks a little bit of charge as it’s collecting.…
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Feb 21, 2019
Episode 4: Can metal-halide perovskite solar cells be used for concentrated PV devices?
Research on perovskites has progressed rapidly for PV and LEDs, with new solar-cell efficiency records being set at a regular pace. There are hints of the first commercial products reaching the market by 2020, just a decade since perovskite photovoltaics were first discovered. MRS Bulletin presents the impact of a recent advance in this burgeoning field.
Read the abstract in Nature Energy (doi:10.1038/s41560-018-0220-2).
Transcript
Welcome to MRS Bulletin’s Materials News Podcast, providing breakthrough news & interviews with researchers on the hot topics of 3D bioprinting, artificial intelligence and machine learning, bioelectronics, perovskites, quantum materials, robotics, and synthetic biology. My name is Bob Braughler.
Concentrated photovoltaic devices – also called CPV, which use lenses and mirrors to focus sunlight onto small, highly efficient solar cells, can have power-conversion efficiencies as high as 46%. Very expensive multi-junction solar cells made with groups III…
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Feb 13, 2019
Episode 3: 3D-printed implant designed to repair spinal injuries
A silicon chip with 4 million microscopic mirrors is used to shine UV light in a 3D pattern based on a digital MRI image of the spinal cord wound in rats. The light falls onto a mixture of poly(ethylene) glycol and gelatin methacrylate, which solidifies into the shape of the wound.
Transcript
PRACHI PATEL: Welcome to MRS Bulletin’s Materials News Podcast, providing breakthrough news & interviews with researchers on the hot topics of 3D bioprinting, artificial intelligence and machine learning, bioelectronics, perovskites, quantum materials, robotics, and synthetic biology. My name is Prachi Patel.
Over 250,000 people around the world suffer a spinal cord injury every year.
SHAOCHEN CHEN: Spinal cord damage turns out to be a very devastating disease. You know people cannot walk, they feel nothing below the hip and other parts of the body.
PATEL: Shaochen Chen, a nanoengineer at the University of California in San Diego, worked with neuroscientists to 3D-print implants that can rep…
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Jan 25, 2019
Episode 2: Optoelectronic properties of perovskites tunable due to reversible surface relaxation
Research on perovskites has progressed rapidly for PV and LEDs, with new solar-cell efficiency records being set at a regular pace. There are hints of the first commercial products reaching the market by 2020, just a decade since perovskite photovoltaics were first discovered. MRS Bulletin presents the impact of a recent advance in this burgeoning field.
Read the abstract in Nature Materials (doi:10.1038/s41563-018-0164-8).
Transcript
Welcome to MRS Bulletin’s Materials News Podcast, providing breakthrough news & interviews with researchers on the hot topics of 3D bioprinting, artificial intelligence and machine learning, bioelectronics, perovskites, quantum materials, robotics, and synthetic biology. My name is Bob Braughler.
The layered nature of Ruddlesden–Popper perovskites means that the materials can be shaved down to a single layer or just a few layers. The properties of any material at the molecular level are different from those at larger scales. Kian Ping Loh, at the N…
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Jan 15, 2019
Episode 1: How reduced-dimensional metal halide perovskites are formed
Research on perovskites has progressed rapidly for PV and LEDs, with new solar-cell efficiency records being set at a regular pace. There are hints of the first commercial products reaching the market by 2020, just a decade since perovskite photovoltaics were first discovered. MRS Bulletin presents the impact of a recent advance in this burgeoning field. Read the abstract in Nature Materials (doi:10.1038/s41563-018-0154-x).
Transcript
Welcome to the first episode of the MRS Bulletin’s Materials News Podcast, providing breakthrough news & interviews with researchers on the hot topics of 3D bioprinting, artificial intelligence and machine learning, bioelectronics, perovskites, quantum materials, robotics, and synthetic biology. My name is Bob Braughler.
A new study offers key insights into the formation of layered two-dimensional perovskite films known as Ruddlesden–Popper phases, a class of materials that hold promise for stable light-harvesting and light-emitting devices.
Despit…
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