The US National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced awards that will support research into advanced materials for electronics and other applications.
The awards are for three Materials Interdisciplinary Research Teams (MIRT) and nine Materials Research Science and Engineering Centres (MRSEC), following a competition introduced by the NSF.
The centres and teams support active collaboration among universities, international collaborators, industry and national laboratories.
According to Janice Hicks, deputy director for NSF's division of materials research: 'These multidisciplinary awards will especially promote areas such as next-generation electronics and photonics, and bio- and soft-materials.'
The Columbia University MIRT, 'Building functional nanoarchitectures in van der Waals materials,' examines the assembly and physical properties of new composite materials created by 'nano-laminating' atomic sheets of different van der Waals materials, which have novel electronic properties and are expected to lead to new nanoelectronic devices. The team will look to exploit a wide range of new material building blocks, including both inorganic and organic materials.
Research
The University of Texas at Austin MIRT, 'Exploring unusual properties of transition metal oxides,' will design and develop new transition metal oxides and will increase understanding of these materials, which can be capable of advanced properties such as high temperature superconductivity. The work could impact new materials development for the next generation of electronic and electrochemical energy devices.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill MIRT, 'Stressed polymers - exploiting tension in soft matter,' will develop new principles in soft materials design, where mechanical stress in materials is generated, managed, and harvested by molecular engineering, which could have wide application in medical and related industries.
The three new MRSECs awarded by the competition include the University of Utah's Centre of Excellence in Materials Research and Innovation, which will work on 'Next-generation materials for plasmonics and spintronics.'
The centre will foster interdisciplinary basic research on new materials in two groups, one of which is focused on organic electronic materials research that has potential application in telecoms, imaging, magnetic memory and cheap solar cells.
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National Science Foundation
The US organisation is funding Materials Interdisciplinary Research Teams and Materials Research Science and Engineering Centres to develop new materials for electronics
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UK organic solar cell project to get more funding
A project in the UK with the aim of proving the feasibility of polymer semiconductor-based solar cells should win financing from private sources in the next few months
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