Announcements

The inaugural Fundamentals of Quantum Materials Winter School will be held at the University of Maryland, January 16-19, 2017 at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD.

This school, sponsored by ICAM and the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, is aimed at providing fundamental training to our current and future generations of Quantum Materials scientists in synthesis and characterization techniques. It will bring together senior and junior scientists to address topics at the forefront of current research into quantum materials, while also providing pedagogical background and practical training for junior scientists. With an interdisciplinary and diverse crowd including physicists, chemists, and materials scientists, participants will gain a basic functional knowledge of how to plan and carry out synthesis relevant to the study of quantum materials, and will have a unique opportunity to interact with some of the top researchers in the field while networking with fellow peers. 

The American Physical Society (APS) has elected Judith Yang to the position of Fellow. APS President Homer Neal cited Yang’s selection: “For seminal contributions to in situ environmental transmission electron microscopy, the fundamental understanding of metal oxidation and the application of nanomaterials and catalysis.” Yang joined 14 other members of the APS Division of Materials Physics to be named Fellows this year. The APS caps the number of new Fellows elected each year to one half of one percent of its 51,000 members internationally. The Fellowship committee evaluates each nomination based on a criteria of exceptional contributions to the physics enterprise, including outstanding research, application, leadership or service and contributions to education related to the field of physics.

“I feel honored in becoming a Fellow of the American Physical Society, but I also look forward to the attention and recognition it will bring to the University of Pittsburgh,” said Yang. “We have only recently been able to see the dynamic processes of oxidation at the nanoscale by using environmental transmission electron microscopy; we are starting to gain a new fundamental understanding of oxidation that challenges classical theories.

The Behrend Computational Materials Meeting 2016 will be held Saturday, November 19 from 10 am to 4 pm at Penn State Behrend (Erie, PA). The focus of the meeting will be on Atomic Level Methods and Applications

There is no participation fee, and lunch will be provided. To officially register, please fill out the form below. Registration deadline is Wednesday Nov. 9, 2016. (Early registrations preferred).

Questions or concerns?  Please e-mail Blair Tuttle at brt10@psu.edu

Noa Marom's proposal "Materials and Interfaces for Organic and Hybrid Photovoltaics" has been selected for a 2017 Department of Energy (DOE) Innovative and Novel Computation Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) award. This particular award allows use of 160,000,000 CPU hours on Mira at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility. INCITE supports computationally intensive, large-scale research projects with large amounts of dedicated time on supercomputers at DOE's Leadership Computing Facilities.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science provides a portfolio of national high-performance computing facilities housing some of the world’s most advanced supercomputers. These leadership computing facilities enable world-class research for significant advances in science.

The 17th IEEE International Conference on Nanotechnology (IEEE NANO 2017) will be held July 25-28, 2017 at the Pittsburgh Marriott City Center, 112 Washington Place, Pittsburgh, USA. Bill Stanchina will act as the Organizing Chair of the conference.

Several topics rganging from nanoelectronics to nanomaterials to spintronics will be broached. Visit the website for more information about the conference as well as important dates for abstracts and paper submissions.

Tevis Jacobs received an NSF grant to observe and measure nanoscale contact inside an electron microscope, enabling for the first time the visualization of the atomic structure of the component materials while they are in contact.

Jacobs will serve as principal investigator of the study, “Collaborative Research: Understanding the Formation and Separation of Nanoscale Contacts,” which received $298,834 over three years.

He and his team will collaborate with the University of California-Merced. As the electron microscopy examines the materials’ surfaces, the experiments using molecular dynamics computer simulations will be replicated to reveal atomic-scale.

npj 2D Materials and Applications is an online-only, open access journal that aims to become a top-tier interdisciplinary platform for scientists to share research on 2D materials and their applications. Part of the Nature Partner Journals series, npj 2D Materials and Applications is published in partnership with FCT NOVA, Lisbon, with the support of the European Materials Research Society (E-MRS).

In terms of policy making and impact, the journal responds to the pressing requirements of translating robust research based on this new class of materials into systems and devices that deliver sustainable solutions for a wide range of applications.

Energy expert Venkat Viswanathan have received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) to study the use of dendrite-blocking polymers in lithium-ion batteries. 

When charged repeatedly, lithium-ion batteries run the risk of overheating, and even catching fire. This is due to the formation of dendrites, or microscopic fibers of lithium that can form during the charging cycle. Over time, these dendrites can grow long enough that they connect the battery’s electrodes to one another, causing the battery to short-circuit and become a potential hazard. In order to fully implement future lithium-ion battery technologies, which could greatly increase the battery power of our smartphones, electric vehicles, and more, engineers need to find a way to stop these dendrites from forming.

The Department of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University has an open tenure-track position at the Assistant Professor level.  The search is open to all areas of Electrical Engineering, with particular interest in: Biological & Biomedical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Electronic Materials and Devices, Information Sciences and Systems, Photonics, Power and Energy, Quantum Engineering, Robotics and Cyber-Physical Systems, and Solid State Physics. Interested candidates should have a commitment to teaching and a demonstrated ability to pursue a high impact research program. The Department is especially interested in applicants from groups underrepresented in Engineering.

Interested candidates should apply on-line at: https://apply-ee.princeton.edu/.

Hrvoje Petek and Jin Zhao received a $675,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for a proposal entitled “TiO₂ photocatalysis: the coupling of electrons, plasmons, polarons, and molecules by ultrafast photoemission spectroscopy and theory.”

This is a continuation of Petek’s and Zhao’s joint experimental/theoretical studies on femtosecond time scale photoinduced dynamics in the photocatalytically active material TiO₂. In this iteration of the continuing research effort, the focus is on how plasmonic excitations and ionic lattice response influence the interaction of photoexcited electrons with adsorbed molecules.