Columbia Wins National Science Foundation Materials Research Science and Engineering Center for the Third Consecutive Time

In news announced today by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Columbia University has been awarded $18 million for a new Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) for Advanced Electronic Materials (AEM). Under the direction of Colin Nuckolls, Sheldon and Dorothea Buckler Professor of Material Science, with associate director Xiaoyang Zhu, Howard Family Professor of Nanoscience, this award is Columbia’s third MRSEC grant since 2014. 

“Every six years, we must recompete against the strongest materials research teams in the country, and to win, we have to reinvent ourselves around fundamentally new science. With the AEM, we are taking on one of the hardest problems in modern technology: moving and processing information without wasting energy,” said Jeannette Wing, Columbia’s executive vice president for research.

The NSF MRSEC program supports pioneering materials science and engineering research at approximately 20 university-led centers across the United States. This year, NSF awarded six MRSEC grants, totaling $108 million. Over the next six years, Columbia researchers involved with the new AEM center will focus on developing advanced electronic materials needed to improve semiconductors, quantum hardware, and other emerging electronic technologies.  

The new AEM center follows two prior MRSECs over the last 12 years. In 2014, Columbia received a MRSEC grant to study precision assembly of superstratic and superatomic solids; that center was succeeded in 2020 by Columbia’s MRSEC for Precision Assembled Quantum Materials (PAQM). 

The PAQM center focused on the creation and characterization of two categories of unique materials: two-dimensional (2D) materials and superatoms. Two-dimensional materials are layers that are just a few atoms thick. They are peeled off, layer by layer, from larger crystals; the layers can then be combined and twisted in different ways to create new properties, such as superconductivity or unique forms of magnetism. Superatoms are clusters of atoms that collectively behave as one single atom. One notable example first created by PAQM researchers is graphullerene, a new, superatomic form of carbon.   

“In the PAQM, we learned to assemble quantum materials with atomic precision and tune their properties almost at will,” said Zhu. “We also explored our most forward-looking ideas that became seeds for the new MRSEC. The new AEM center is ready to address some of the most profound questions in materials science and engineering: how to transport information as coherent waves and how to tune quantum materials with light.”

The center’s ultimate goal is to understand how to control the quantum properties of materials to develop more powerful computers, faster and more efficient forms of communication, and other novel quantum devices. 

The Science: Rewiring How Information Moves

The new center will include researchers from Columbia and partner institutions, including Yale University, City College of New York, Barnard College, Howard University, the Flatiron Institute, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the Max Planck Institutes in Hamburg and Mainz, in collaboration with several industry groups. The researchers will be divided into two interdisciplinary groups (IRGs). One group will study advanced semiconductors for coherent charge-neutral information flow, while the other will design non-equilibrium quantum metamaterials. 

The first group will be led by Aravind Devarakonda, assistant professor of applied physics, and David Reichman, Centennial Professor of Chemistry. The goal of the group will be to design semiconductors that can transport information through rippling quantum excitations, rather than electricity. Electronics, as we know them, are powerful and continuously shrinking—some devices are now reaching nanometer scales—but electricity is not a perfect medium for transmitting information. Electronic devices require complex combinations of materials, and electrons bouncing around them can be lost along the way. 

“Modern electronics move information by pushing electrical charge through materials, and every step of that journey wastes energy as heat,” said Devarakonda. “We are designing materials in which information instead rides on coherent, charge-neutral waves. If we can convert between light, electrical signals, and these excitations inside a single material, we open a path to information processing without the losses that limit today’s devices.” 

The second group will be led by James McIver, assistant professor of physics, and Andrew Millis, professor of physics and co-director of the Center for Computational Quantum Physics at the Flatiron Institute. Their goal will be to predict and ultimately create new kinds of quantum metamaterials. These are light-matter hybrid materials with unique electromagnetic environments that can shape and enhance properties such as superconductivity, the lossless flow of electricity, and so-called topological states, which may help reduce error rates in quantum computers. The team will explore novel ways to modify the electromagnetic fields of materials, such as by using light trapped within engineered spaces called cavities, to drive entirely new effects. 

“Ordinarily, you are stuck with the quantum phases a material offers you at equilibrium,” said McIver. “By surrounding these materials with engineered electromagnetic environments, such as optical cavities, we can coax them into states that have no natural counterpart—from modified superconductivity to new topological phases—and establish the design rules to create them on demand.”

The Impact: An Engine for STEM Talent

Beyond its research goals, the new center is committed to training the next generation of scientists and engineers. The prior center graduated 29 graduate students and spun out five start-up companies, and it established successful education programs targeted from K-12 students to postdoctoral fellows. These programs included Materials Madness, a science festival for K-12 attendees; the Quantum Materials Work-Scholars Program for undergraduate work-study students; and the Materials Innovators Workshop, which featured mentoring and career-development sessions for graduate students and postdocs. 

The new center plans to continue these STEM programs while developing new ones, including a pre-college Fundamentals of Materials Science course for high school students through Columbia’s Science Honors Program, a mini-research experience for teachers program to give them hands-on materials research experience, and a new scholars program for undergraduates. Highlighting its presence in New York City, the new AEM center will also co-develop a new exhibit with the New York Hall of Science called “Past, Current, and Future Electronic Materials,” which is expected to launch in the coming year. 

“A center like this is bigger than any single discovery,” said Nuckolls. “Over the next six years, this center will help train the scientists and engineers the country needs—from high school students working beside us at the New York Hall of Science to the graduate students and postdocs who will go on to lead labs, launch companies, and build the next generation of electronics. That is what these centers are for, and it is why you have to earn one all over again every six years.”