Page 11 - CEMS News Winter 2023

FACULTY NEWS
Faculty promotions & research updates continued from page 10
lab research is supported by the National Institutes of Health, the University of Minnesota, the American Cancer Society, and biotechnology industrial partners.
polymeric, and pharmaceutical materials and their composites, with an emphasis on techniques at the micro and nano scales and under extreme conditions including high temperature, strain rate, stress, and irradiation.
Bharat Jalan
Bharat Jalan
The ability to synthesize atomically controlled
materials has continued to drive modern technology
and has led to a myriad of quantum materials affecting
all areas of nanoscience and nanotechnology which rely on the innovation in synthesis. Jalan’s group employs a novel molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) technique for thin film growth, direct and complimentary tools (x-ray diffraction, scanning
Recently, members of the M3
laboratory have discovered
new mechanisms by which
nanocomposites can be
simultaneously strengthened
while maintaining deformability,
a long-standing grand challenge in the structural nanomaterials community. Their work, featured this
year in Nano Letters, demonstrates how designing the atomic bi-metal interface structure attenuates the motion of dislocations (defects responsible for permanent deformation in crystalline materials), leading to enhanced strength and deformability. These findings are generally applicable to other interfaces commonly found in steels and other industrial alloys, and could pave the way to new alloys for lightweight, fuel-efficient vehicles.
In pharmaceutics, the M3 team probes the mechanical properties of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) such as acetaminophen and metformin, among a wide range of compounds, with collaborators in the College
of Pharmaceutics. They aim to design drugs that can be easily milled and compressed into tablets, expanding access to effective, inexpensive medications. M3 members also team with local industrial partners such as Bruker Nano Surfaces (Eden Prairie, Minnesota) to develop new mechanical test protocols for high-throughput evaluation of materials for service under extreme conditions, including nuclear reactor steels and, in collaboration
with David Poerschke’s group, materials for aeronautical applications.
probe microscopy, advanced electron microscopy, spectroscopy techniques) for structural characterization and physical property measurement system for low temperature transport and magnetic measurements to investigate structure-property relationships in functional oxide thin films and heterostructures. His group’s
recent focus has been on the synthesis of thin films, superlattices, and nanomembranes of perovskite, and other complex oxides for their application in quantum information science, microelectronics, and sustainable energy production. Research in the Jalan group is highly interdisciplinary in nature and has a strong collaborative component between materials scientists, chemists, physicists and electrical engineers.
Nathan Mara
Mara’s Multiscale Material Mechanics (M3) Laboratory focuses its efforts on understanding the link between material microstructure and mechanical behavior at length scales ranging from the atomic scale to finished engineered parts. Their work spans metallic, ceramic,
Nathan Mara
CEMSnews Winter 2023 11