Roemig Wins Best Poster Award at Pittsburgh Diffraction Conference

Simon Roemig’s poster presenting research resulting from a collaboration between the Wisconsin MRSEC and the Wisconsin-Puerto Rico Partnerships for Research and Education in Materials (PREM) was presented with the Chung Soo Yoo Best Poster award at the 79th Annual Pittsburgh Diffraction Conference at Argonne National Laboratory in October 2022.

Nominee for Excellence in Graduate Polymer Research Presents at ACS Spring 2022

Jian Sun, A graduate student in Materials Science and Engineering in Professor Padma Gopalan’s lab was nominated in the category of Excellence in Graduate Polymer Research under the division of Polymer Chemistry at ACS Spring 2022. As a nominee, Sun presented on the recently published work, “Synthesis of High Etch Contrast Poly(3-hydroxystyrene)-based Triblock Copolymers for Sub-5 nm Features.” Sun’s travel to the conference was supported through the MRSEC Honored Scholar Travel Award.

MRSEC Travel Award Offers Graduate Student a Chance to Network and Share Research at MRS

Samuel Marks, a University of Wisconsin-Madison Materials Science and Engineering graduate student working in Professor Paul Evans’ lab was supported through the MRSEC Honored Scholar Travel Award to attend the Fall 2021 Materials Research Society (MRS) meeting in Boston. The meeting provided an opportunity to share experimental and computational materials science findings with researchers from around the world.

(2022) Spray-on “SLIPS” and Controlled release “SNIPS”: New Designs for Slippery Antifouling Materials

Coatings that prevent fouling are critical in commercial, industrial, and healthcare contexts. Wisconsin MRSEC researchers have developed new spray-based methods to make nanoporous water-repelling films and spray-on ‘slippery liquid-infused porous surfaces’ (SLIPS). These coatings are antifouling to a range of substances and microorganisms and can be produced using scalable, manufacturing-compatible methods. They also developed new antifouling ‘slippery nanoemulsion-infused porous’ (SNIPS) that use water-in-oil nanoemulsions to slowly release encapsulated cargo.

(2022) An Underwater Topological Waveguide at MHz Frequencies

Concepts of topology recently have been brought to bear on materials designed to control sound waves. Sound wavelengths are much longer than light, making acoustic materials easier to synthesize and their behavior easier to measure. Wisconsin MRSEC researchers are using topological acoustic materials to explore topological physics and enable applications in sensing, communication, and energy transport.

(2022) Speeding the Discovery of Materials Synthesis Techniques using In Situ Synchrotron X-ray Nanobeam Characterization

The creation of novel materials often involves the painstaking and time-consuming synthesis and characterization of a series of samples with small differences. This process is slow and slows the pace of materials innovation. For example, creating sequences of thin layers of metals is an important route to the discovery of new 2D materials for quantum electronics, but it is slowed by the need to explore a large range of thicknesses of the individual layers.