News

MEM-C’s Shared Facilities (MSF) has a new addition! The Quantum Design MPMS3 was installed and commissioned in February 2025 and is ready for use by the scientific community at-large. As a shared facility, the MPMS3 is available for all registered and trained users, even those unaffiliated with MEM-C and even those external to UW. Check out the access page on the MEM-C website for more information or contact the SQUID superusers for details.

Funding for the MEM-C SQUID was made possible by MEM-C’s award from the NSF MRSEC program (DMR-2308979), the University of Washington Quantum Information Sciences and Engineering (QISE) initiative supported by the College of Engineering and College of Arts and Sciences and the UW Department of Chemistry. The MEM-C SQUID is the only MPMS3 instrument available in a shared facility space in the PNW (the nearest one we know of is at UCSB’s MRSEC shared facilities MRL).

To give the SQUID a proper launch, MEM-C is hosting a seminar on April 10th, 2025, with Dr. Randy K. Dumas, Quantum Design, Applications Scientist. The seminar will be in MolES 115 from 1PM to 4PM. The seminar is open for anyone interested to attend! The event will be hosted by Dr. Chaowei Hu, Physics Postdoctoral Scholar in the Xu and Chu groups who is the MEM-C superuser for the MPMS3. The seminar will feature application talks by Randy and MEM-C graduate students will also give brief descriptions of their research plans that rely on the SQUID’s capabilities.

A delegation of MEM-C researchers traveled to PNNL for tours and facility tours last last Wednesday. The UW visiting group consisted of five PhD students from the De Yoreo, Gamelin, Idrobo, Mouradian, Rorrer, Xu, and Fu groups), one postdoc (Rorrer group) and De Yoreo, Gamelin, and Idrobo from the UW faculty side.

The visit featured a series of short talks by PNNL staff scientists, including Le Wang (thin films), Grant Johnson (chemical separations), Zbynek Novotny (scanning tunneling microscopy), Maxim Ziatdinov (AI/ML), Chongmin Wang (batteries and in-situ TEM), and Micah Prange (density functional theory). In addition, Scott Smith provided an overview of career opportunities at a national laboratory. MEM-C visitors also toured the laboratories in PNNL’s new Energy Sciences Center (ESC), which houses state-of-the-art instrumentation such as in-situ electron microscopes, an atom probe, molecular beam epitaxy and pulsed laser deposition chambers, a low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope, and a magnetic resonance spectrometer.

During the visit, Gamelin and Idrobo met with Novotny to discuss the feasibility of detecting Yb and measuring its spin state in a few-layer CrI₃ encapsulated with BN/graphene. Novotny recommended reaching out to Dr. Percy Zahl at the Center for Functional Materials (CFM) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) due to the specialized requirements of such measurements. MEM-C also plans to invite Dr. Maxim Ziatdinov to the UW campus. An expert in AI/ML methods and their implementation in imaging analysis, electron microscopy workflows, and materials synthesis, Dr. Ziatdinov would lead hands-on workshops and contribute to strengthening the capabilities of the AI Core.

UW MEM-C faculty and graduate students along with other UW faculty participating in the UH PREM traveled to Hawai’i last week to visit our partners at the University of Hawaii at Manoa Materials and Education Consortium (UH MRE-C). Seven MEM-C graduate students (Cossairt, Gamelin, Pozzo, Rorrer, Roumeli, Sherman, D. J. Xiao groups) and seven MEM-C faculty (Cossairt, Gamelin, Idrobo, Pozzo, Rorrer, Sherman, Carroll) were part of the visiting contingent from UW. The week started out with two full days of PREM research meetings, strategy sessions, and student presentations on the UH Manoa campus. Those research meetings were followed by three full days of MEM-C and MRE-C graduate students and faculty bringing MEM-C’s NanoCamp to Honolulu area schools with signature lesson plans like Light as a Tool, Nanoscience & Color, Nanosized Magnets, and more. UW-UH joint outreach groups (including 22 UH students, postdocs, faculty) led hands-on NanoCamp activities for over 650 students at 6 middle and high schools over 3 days!

MEM-C held its 3^rd annual Winter Symposium this past Tuesday. The event was held in conjunction with UW QuantumX, an initiative on campus involving several MEM-C faculty, most notably Fu who is the QuantumX Director. QuantumX was established as an interdisciplinary Deans-level initiative that seeks to advance and integrate QISE research, education, and commercialization across the UW community and its partners. This event combined MEM-C’s fundamental materials research with the broader quantum community at UW. This year’s MEM-C + QuantumX Symposium brought together nearly 100 attendees to view the current research of UW graduate students and postdocs contributing to fundamental research in quantum-based sciences. The three-hour event featured graduate student and postdoc poster sessions (~40 posters), remarks by Gamelin and Fu, and time for everyone to meet and discuss future collaborations.

The MEM-C Seed awards for the 2024/2025 award period have been announced!

Exploratory Seed grants have been awarded to UW faculty across several departments to help nascent innovative materials research efforts obtain preliminary results. Prof. Mo Chen (MSE) is leading a collaboration with Prof. Mo Li (ECE, IRG-2) to investigate in-situ strain control in superconducting qubits. Prof. David Masiello (Chemistry) is working with Prof. Juan Carlos Idrobo (IRG-1 & IRG-2) and Prof. Di Xiao (IRG-2) to explore the topological state tomography in 2D quantum materials. Prof. Sara Mouradian (ECE) will probe electric field sensing at the quantum limit for materials science with their collaborators Prof. Alexandra Velian (IRG-2) and Prof. Mo Li (IRG-2). Prof. Doug Reed (Chemistry) is teaming up with Prof. Daniel Gamelin (IRG-1) to manipulate magnetic ordering in porous chromium-halide perovskites. Prof. Gerald Seidler (Physics) will research crystal-field and covalency effects in van der Waals metal-halide compounds using multi-modal X-Ray spectroscopy and will be joined in this effort by Prof. Daniel Gamelin (IRG-1) and Prof. Xiaosong Li (IRG-1).

Multidisciplinary Team grants have been awarded to UW materials-research teams in areas complementary to MEM-C’s current research profile. Prof. Julie Rorrer (ChemE) and Prof. Eleftheria Roumeli will pursue developing biomass-derived carbon supports for catalytic applications in waste plastic deconstruction and will be joined in this effort by Prof. Lilo Pozzo (IRG-1) along with collaborators from the University of Hawai’i, Prof. Robert Johnson (UH PREM) & Prof. Przemyslaw Dera (UH PREM). Prof. Zachary Sherman (ChemE) and Prof. David Bergsman (ChemE) will also be teaming up with Prof. Lilo Pozzo (IRG-1) and collaborators from UH, Joseph Brown (UH PREM) and Chrisy Xiyu Du (UH PREM), to test the autonomous inverse design of colloidal metasurfaces with targeted dielectric function. Finally, Prof. Shijing Sun (MechE) and Prof. Kevin Jamieson (CSE) will enhance MEM-C’s AI Core efforts with their project with Prof. Dianne Xiao (IRG-1) to develop an AI agent for energy-efficient inorganic synthesis.

Congratulations to the MEM-C Seed awardees! We are lucky to have you join us in our materials science pursuits!

MEM-C research has been featured in a few recent news stories! MEM-C’s PREM awards with UCF and UH were featured in the Department of Chemistry’s news in a feature “NSF awards UW partners $13.6M to broaden access in the sciences“. UCF Today also had a feature on the PREM award “UCF Awarded $4.2 Million Grant for Research and Student Education in Quantum Materials“. Prof. Kai-Mei Fu (IRG-1 co-Lead) was highlighted in the UW News Perspectives piece “The Quantum Quest“.

Updated: 11/21/2024

We are pleased to announce a call for proposals for 2024 UW MEM-C Materials Research Seed Grants, open to all members of the UW materials research community. The proposal deadline* is November 27, 2024 at 5:00 PM PST. For a copy of the full MEM-C Seed Grant call with submission instructions, UW researchers should contact their departments who all received the full details via email from MEM-C Director, Daniel Gamelin.

An applicant must hold a faculty-level appointment at the University of Washington to serve as Principal Investigator (PI). An applicant may serve on only one proposal as PI, and as an investigator (co-PI or PI) on no more than 2. All proposed research must be clearly distinct from ongoing externally funded research and must involve the collaboration of two or more UW research groups. Current MEM-C senior investigators may not receive MEM-Seed funds but can be listed as unfunded collaborators.

MEM-Seed grants are intended to provide short-term funding to help initiate exciting collaborative materials-research projects on campus, with the longer-term goal of supporting new research directions that will expand MEM-C’s research activities beyond their existing scope. The MEM-Seed program aims to augment the Center’s focus areas: IRG-1, IRG-2, AI Core, our broader impacts efforts, and our PREM activities with UCF and UH. There are two types of Seed Grants: Multidisciplinary Team Grants and Exploratory Seed Grants.

If there are any questions about the program, contact MEM-C’s Grant Manger, Kelly Olenyik (olen@uw.edu).

* Note, that because the due date on this news post was originally listed as 12/02/2024, proposals will be accepted until that date without any penalty, if needed.

MEM-C IRG-2 gathered last Friday to hold an AI Core roundtable. Students and postdocs from 7 groups presented lightning, pitch talks to brainstorm ways machine learning could assist in critical breakthroughs in material science research. The roundtable was co-hosted by Ting Cao, Assistant Professor UW MSE & Associate Vice Provost for Research Cyberinfrastructure, and Kevin Jamieson, Associate Professor UW Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. Both Prof. Cao & Prof. Jamieson received MEM-C seed awards in 2023 for MEM-C AI Core research.

The lightning talks covered a wide range of MEM-C IRG-2 research areas. The Cao group proposed leveraging large atomic models to investigate more complex multiscale moiré structures. The Xu group pitched the idea of using ML’s image segmentation capabilities to accelerate flake identification and layer determination for 2D materials. Similarly, the Yankowitz group discussed ways ML could be incorporated into STM, and the Idrobo group suggested ideas for ML/AI integration for STEM. The group also heard from the Chu, Velian and Eley groups. The session ended with an overview of the Jamieson group’s research areas and a general discussion about next steps.

MEM-C is thrilled to be welcoming 7 students to the 2024-20425 Academic-Year Research Accelerator Research Experience for Undergraduates Program (AYRA REU). These students applied and were accepted to participate in the program for up to two academic quarters. They represent a variety of UW majors from Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, MSE, Physics, Biochemistry and Aeronautical & Astronautical Engineering. There are sophomores, juniors and seniors participating in the program this year. All of the students have one thing in common: they want an opportunity to do undergraduate materials research. MEM-C is lucky to have such an eager group, ready to participate in our research!

The Pozzo group (IRG-1) will be hosting two AYRA participants, both majoring in chemical engineering, and their research project will focus on implementing an ad-hoc accelerated materials synthesis platform for studying the cooperative synthesis and assembly of ultrasmall antimony (III) sulfide nanoparticles using the Jubilee platform. The Velian group (IRG-2) will be hosting a AYRA participant who is majoring in biochemistry and their MEM-C research will utilize clusters as building blocks for the bottom-up synthesis of materials is a way to generate new materials with tailored properties involving the crystallizations of salts with an attempt to form superatomic crystals. The Mo Li group (IRG-2) will be hosting an AYRA participant majoring in aeronautical & astronautical engineering who worked on MEM-C research in our previous award. Their research will include fabricating surface acoustic wave devices that can sense pressure and develop a procedure to transfer these sensors onto curved surfaces. Other participants are being hosted by the Gamelin, Yankowitz, and Cobden groups this year.

The AYRA program could not be possible without the NSF support, our incredible graduate students who mentor these undergraduates, and the faculty who host them. We’re looking forward to getting to know these AYRA participants and helping them gain research experience with MEM-C!

On September 11^th, MEM-C hosted its 2^nd annual “MEM-C Day” on UW-Seattle’s campus. During the event, MEM-C had the pleasure of hosting 23 students and 9 parents from the greater-Seattle homeschooling community for a day of hands-on science experiments. A group of 17 graduate students from the Cossairt, Golder, Reed, and Xiao labs led the students through interactive activities that showcased how nanoscale structures facilitate macroscopic properties, including color and long-range structural integrity. This outreach event was hosted in a UW Department of Chemistry teaching laboratory, which offered these young students the experience of navigating within a real lab space.

The day’s programming started with the Golder group teaching students how to prepare polymer networks that, with enough stirring, turn into bouncy balls. The elasticity of the bouncy balls changes by altering the ratios of various ingredients. 

Next up was the Cossiart lab, whose members helped the students prepare gold nanoparticles by simply combining two ingredients in water. Unlike bulk gold we are used to seeing, these nanoparticles appear pink or purple in solution, telling us about the size of these individual nanoparticles and how these particles interact with light. 

The Reed lab then had the students explore how light interacts with materials, depending on the thickness of that material. Students were able to design their own bookmarks that would then have a thin layer of clear nail polish deposited on top. Because of the way this ultra-thin layer of nail polish reflects light, an iridescent rainbow is deposited on top of the students’ creations.

To finish off a full day of science, the Xiao lab worked with the students to build models of porous molecules out of marshmallows and toothpicks to learn about the crystal structure of materials. To further understand materials at the nanoscale, students then wrote messages with “invisible” ink. Upon heating up their seemingly blank papers with a blow-dryer, their message would appear as the water molecules left the ink structure and the newly colored structure would reveal itself. 

A MEM-C Day parent sent this follow-up note: “Thank you so much for hosting this event. It really jump sparked my son into loving science even more. On the way home he ordered materials so he could recreate some of the experiments you did.”

MEM-C Day was organized by Prof. Matthew Golder, Prof. Andrea Carroll, MEM-C Education and Training Fellow Eden Tzanetopoulos, a Ph.D. student in the Gamelin lab, and Matt Elardo and Lucy Miller, both Ph.D. students in the Golder lab. We’d like to thank the volunteers, students, and parents for making this year’s MEM-C Day such a success!