Tackling grand challenges in the materials science of liquids and glasses and non-equilibrium magnetism.
Research from the Wisconsin MRSEC seed on novel electron solids in two-dimensional materials headed by Ilya Esterlis and Alex Levchenko has shown that bilayer electron crystals exhibit a variety of magnetic states depending on the distance between the two layers and the number of electrons in each layer. These results establish bilayer crystals as a …
An article from Whitney Loo was showcased as part of a themed collection in September from the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) that highlighted select rising stars of applied polymer science research.
The 2026 Breakthrough Research and Education Workshop (BREW) was held on Friday, September 11. The BREW serves multiple purposes and is an important annual activity for the Center. The workshop is an opportunity for all of the participants across the Center to: (1) Share their current research with each other; (2) Meet face to face with people from other research groups; (3) Review and discuss the expectations and priorities of the Center for students and postdocs and for faculty; and (4) Develop science communication skills.
Assistant Professor Daniel Rhodes from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Materials Science & Engineering was awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Innovation Corps (I-Corps) grant, which began in February, 2026. With Ph.D. candidate, Yangchen He, as Entrepreneurial Lead, their team, Pristine Quantum, investigated the complex research and development challenges and industrial adoption barriers of novel 2D semiconductor thin films for next-generation logic and memory architecture.
As part of the Wisconsin MRSEC’s Forward Fellows program, Education Directors Crone and Gillian-Daniel developed a workshop on Mentoring Up for the incoming graduate students. The workshop helps mentees define their goals for their mentoring relationships, recognize their roles and responsibilities in those relationships, develop strategies for effectively working with their mentors, and begin creating a network of mentors.
The Wisconsin MRSEC Advanced Materials Industrial Consortium (AMIC) facilitates industrial access to the MRSEC and UW Madison shared instrumentation facilities. The AMIC team has performed a comprehensive benchmarking study across peer institutions semiconductor nanofabrication centers that evaluates their operational models, access policies, technical capabilities, and industry engagement practices.
Wisconsin MRSEC researchers in IRG 2 have discovered that the compound TaIrTe4, a transition metal dichalcogenide, when made only a few atomic layers thick and cooled to cryogenic temperatures, transitions into an unusual state called a one-dimensional charge density wave. A charge density wave state exhibits variation in the local density of electrons over distances significantly longer than the distances between the atoms.
Wisconsin MRSEC IRG 1 developed a new generative AI model for metallic glasses, called GlassVAE. The model is based on ideas similar to ChatGPT, but adapted to describe the complex atomic structures of glasses. It is designed to recognize meaningful changes in atomic structure, rather than being affected by how atoms are positioned or labeled in traditional coordinate descriptions. Unlike many general-purpose AI models that often generate unrealistic atomic arrangements, GlassVAE includes “physics guardrails” based on structural features and energy, ensuring that the generated structures remain physically sensible.
Wisconsin MRSEC IRG 2 researchers have developed an efficient, accurate first-principles computational method that predicts how magnons and atomic vibrations (phonons) couple inside magnetic materials — a calculation that previously required prohibitively expensive computations. By predicting this coupling from the chemical composition of a material alone, with no fitted parameters, the new method lets researchers screen and design materials with longerlasting, higher performing spin waves before any sample is grown.
Wisconsin MRSEC researchers investigated the effect of polymer molecular structure on the blend properties and ion transport capabilities. Increasing the side chain length of one polymer improved solvation of Li ions and increased ionic conductivity. These insights will inform the design of next-generation battery electrolytes with improved performance.