Tackling grand challenges in the materials science of liquids and glasses and non-equilibrium magnetism.
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.
Wisconsin MRSEC IRG 2 members Daniel Rhodes and Yangchen He are commercializing new materials for advanced computing developed in part with MRSEC support. With support from the NSF I-Corps program and the Wisconsin MRSEC Advanced Materials Industrial Consortium, Rhodes and He have founded Pristine Quantum Inc. The company is based on their inventions of ultra low defect 2D semiconductor crystals and a method to print them directly onto industry-compatible substrates.
Wisconsin MRSEC IRG 1 researchers used three experimental techniques to characterize physical aging in organic semiconductor glasses. They showed that producing the glasses by physical vapor deposition can reduce the impact of aging by at least a factor of 10. In addition, they showed that routine laboratory measurements on bulk samples can provide reliable predictions for physical aging in the very thin films used in OLED displays. These results are relevant for OLED displays as glass stability is key to maintaining high efficiency, and they advance our MRSEC IRG goal to control mobility to create glasses with desirable properties.
In October 2025, Wisconsin MRSEC researchers and the Interdisciplinary Education and Outreach Team (E/O) traveled to the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez (UPRM) for the 2025 PREM Annual Meeting. This visit underscored the longstanding partnership between the Wisconsin MRSEC and UPRM.
The Wisconsin MRSEC Advanced Materials Industrial Consortium (AMIC) seeks to provide companies with the materials, research, equipment, and talent they need. This year, the theme for the AMIC annual meeting was next-generation microelectronics. The workshop brought together nearly 150 attendees. It highlighted industrial trends and talent needs in presentations from Lockheed Martin, Intel, Eaton, Western Digital, Micron, Seagate, Polar Semiconductor, and Bolb, and MRSEC IRG 2 research relevant to magnetic data storage and quantum transduction in presentations by faculty and student posters. The event facilitated engagement between faculty, staff, students, and industry leaders, with the goals of fostering sponsored research, and opportunities for internships and employment.