MRS Bulletin Materials News Podcast MRS Bulletin

In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Laura Leay interviews Falon Kalutantirige from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Ying Li from the University of Wisconsin-Madison about their approach and discovery when characterizing nanovoids in polymer films. Using polyamide (PA) membranes as their subject of study, the researchers applied graph theory combined with electron tomography and molecular dynamics simulations to characterize the morphology of the nanovoids. The key to unders...

In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Laura Leay interviews Alexandre Dmitriev from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden about his group’s computational model of a three-dimensional metamaterial exhibiting a magnetoelectric effect—known as the Tellegen effect—when exposed to light. The building blocks of the metamaterial are comprised of disks of silicon, 150 nm in diameter, supporting a cylinder of cobalt. Silicon is chosen for its high refractive index and cobalt for its magnetic properti...

In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Laura Leay interviews Antonio Dominguez-Alfaro from the University of Cambridge, UK about the development of a single-step manufacturing approach for a multimaterial 3D-printing method. The research team created two inks. One ink is a polymeric deep eutectic solvent – polyDES – made by combining and heating two salts to form a deep eutectic monomer and adding a photo-initiator to allow the ink to be cured. This ink is an ionic conductor so can capture s...

In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Elizabeth Wilson interviews postdoctoral researcher M. Iqbal Bakti Utama of Northwestern University about a method allowing single photon production without defect. Aryl diazonium chemistry has been used in the past to functionalize the surface of carbon nanotubes. Utama’s group found that this chemistry also works for tungsten diselenide surfaces. The group immersed tungsten diselenide monolayers into an aqueous solution of 4-nitrobenzene-diazonium tet...

In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Sophia Chen interviews Irmgard Bischofberger of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about her investigation of how chirality emerges in nature. She uses liquid crystal molecules of disodium chromoglycate in her studies. When the molecules are dissolved in water, they form linear rods. The research group then forces the rods through a microfluidic cell, causing the rods to assemble into spiral structures without mirror symmetry. The achiral structu...

In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Laura Leay interviews Eric Pop, Xiangjin Wu, and Asir Intisar Khan from Stanford University about their work building a phase-change memory superlattice at the nanoscale. They created the superlattice by alternating layers of antimony-tellurium nanoclusters with a nanocomposite made from germanium, antimony, and tellurium (GST467). Each layer is ~2 nm thick and the superlattice consists of 15 periods of these alternating layers. The microstructural prop...