Author Archives: rpage

2018 OSU Materials Research Seed Grant Awards

Posted on by

We are pleased to announce that after a thorough internal and external review process, 4 Proto-IRG, 2 MTBG, and 3 EMRG  awards have been selected to fund exceptionally promising, innovative materials research on campus through the 2018 OSU Materials Research Seed Grant Program.

The OSU MRSGP provides internal research funding opportunities through three distinct Funding Tiers 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), the Center for Exploration of Novel Complex Materials (ENCOMM), and the Institute for Materials Research (IMR).

2018 Proto-IRG Grants
Proto-IRG Grants ($80,000 each) form new Interdisciplinary Research Groups (IRGs) that could potentially be incorporated into the renewal proposal of Center for Emergent Materials, an NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, in 2019.

  • Structure, Defects and Emergent Properties at Magnetic Interfaces
     Jinwoo Hwang, Department of Materials Science and Engineering
  • Metamorphic Narrow Gap Antimonide Materials for Topological Insulators
     Sanjay Krishna, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
  • Tunable Ferromagnetic and Antiferromagnetic Spintronics Based on Graphene Quantum Hall States
     Jeanie Lau, Department of Physics
  • Anionic Functional Materials
     Yiying Wu, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

2018 Multidisciplinary Team Building Grants
MTBG Grants ($60,000 each) support multidisciplinary materials research teams to compete effectively for federal block-funding opportunities

  • Sulfide-Based Lithium Superionic Conductors (LISICON) for All Solid-State Energy Storage Device
     Jung Hyun Kim, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
  • MOCVD Growth and Material Properties of Earth Abundant Semiconducting ZnSnN
     Hongping Zhao, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

2018 Exploratory Materials Research Grants
EMRG Grants ($40,000 each) enable nascent and innovative materials research to emerge to the point of being competitive for external funding

  • Mechanoelectric effects on bone mineralization as a stiffness modulator
    Hanna Cho, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
  • Investigation of Boron-Based III-V Compound Semiconductors
     Tyler Grassman, Department of Materials Science and Engineering
  • Establishing Computational and Experimental Frameworks to Elucidate Magnetoelastic Interactions in Smart Metamaterials
    Ryan Harne, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

CEM Researchers Awarded NSF iSuperSeed2

Posted on by

Ohio State researchers have been awarded a prestigious iSuperSeed2 award to explore new materials for the future of quantum information systems by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The iSuperSeed2 grant, awarded as a supplement to the Center for Emergent Materials (CEM) at Ohio State, an NSF Materials Research in Science and Engineering Centers (MRSEC), was the single award granted in the area of quantum information.

Professors Daniel Gauthier, Jay Gupta, Ezekiel Johnston-Halperin, and Roland Kawakami in the Department of Physics are collaborating with Prof. Michael Flatté at the University of Iowa on the project, bringing together researchers with expertise in 2D materials (IRG-2: Gupta, Kawakami), spin and magnetism (IRG-3: Flatté, Johnston-Halperin), and quantum measurement (Gauthier). In addition, collaborations outside the iSuperSeed2 team include recent Discovery Theme hires Profs. Chun Ning “Jeanie” Lau (Physics) and Marc Bockrath (Physics).

The program focuses on using the weak interactions between mechanically stacked materials, known as van der Waals bonds, to develop a universal approach to quantum transduction (the transfer of quantum information between two different materials). This van der Waals bonding is commonly found in 2D materials such as graphene and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), leading to the creating of “van der Waals heterostructures” where single to few layers of 2D crystal can be mechanically stacked to fine tune layer-to-layer coupling.

As a result, van der Waals bonds allow for a “Goldilocks” level of interaction between two materials, where the quantum interactions are neither too weak nor too strong, and are present in materials ranging from insulators, to conductors, to magnets, to superconductors. Ohio State researchers plan to exploit this flexibility to explore a wide variety of materials for applications in future quantum-based technologies.