Material Science

Material Science Research focuses on novel functional nano-materials for future technologies. Nano-materials in the form of thin films, powders, and filaments or strands are very attractive over their macro-scale counterparts, not only because of their higher surface area, but also the unique properties that nano-materials provide. MSR can provide contributions that allow us to imagine new technologies such as novel catalysts, as well as materials for energy-conversion and energy-storage.

Our major research activities are:

Understand the fundamental principle of materials: To fully understand a material and predict its properties, the material needs to be reduced to the atomic scale. Computational Material Modeling enables us to calculate the dependency of chemical composition, crystal structure and surface morphology to the functionality of a material using a variety of computational models. This understanding will allow us to design a material with new desired properties.

Discovery of materials with novel functions: Compared with a conventional Edisonion approach, Combinatorial Chemistry is a powerful research tool, which allows us to carry out a large number of experiments in a short period of time. Within this family of experiments, material compositions not even imagined may now be discovered. This approach of material synthesis and testing by systematic combinatorial design increases both the efficiency and the speed of discovery of materials that we desire.

Control and design the material on the nanoscale: Nano-Engineering is a crucial element of our research that brings our material discovery/design results into practical applications. Once a desired composition is determined, various pathways are examined to control the material synthesis at the atomic level, both compositionally as well as structurally.