CDCM Seed Projects

CDCM Seed Projects enable the Center to engage new faculty members and provide flexibility to incorporate emerging, potentially transformative research directions. Broad participation, including junior faculty members and small, interdisciplinary teams engaged in emerging areas of research, are emphasized. Open calls for seed project proposals will be issued annually. 

Learn more about previous Seed Projects. 
 

Accelerated discovery of designer defects in heterostructures with low dimensional materials - Dr. Wennie Wang, McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering

Diversification of memory and storage technologies and improvements of 10x-100x in capacity and energy efficiency are required in light of the growing energy consumption with current architectures, which will necessitate novel materials platforms. We focus on memristors based on monolayer to few-layer low-dimensional materials, dubbed ‘atomristors.’ Atomristors have been shown to undergo resistive switching through the formation and dissolution of point defects involving the adsorption of a metal adatom. Memristors based on two dimensional materials are quickly becoming competitive with existing technologies. Despite intense study, there is still a huge variability in reported switching behavior in 2D materials. The origin of such challenges is a severely limited understanding of defects in 2D materials, the vast space of candidate 2D materials and electrodes, and the need for a materials-based model to describe switching behavior. There is thus a critical need to develop new physical models and automated computational tools for accelerating defect engineering in 2D materials.

Our long-term goal is to accelerate the realization of two-dimensional materials as high-density and energy-efficient platforms in memristive technologies. The overall objective of the proposed work is computer-assisted prediction (first-principles combined with machine learning) for novel 2D materials with low switching energy and high ON/OFF ratios of resistive switching in bipolar memristor devices. Our central premise is that the interface between the monolayer and electrode is an essential component to accurately predict the switching energy and ON/OFF ratio. That is, the switching energy and changes in the conductivity can be computationally predicted in heterostructures and used to screen through optimal materials for memristor devices. Our rationale is based on our physical model for resistive switching and preliminary data on a small subset of systems, as described below.

Light-Activated Cytoskeletal Crosslinkers for Controllable Network Assemblies - Dr. Brian Belardi, McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering

During organ development, tissues – structures composed of many cells – undergo dramatic 3-D transformations, giving rise to complex morphologies and a variety of material properties. Building synthetic systems that emulate these transformations but with user controlled initiation and precision holds great promise for a variety of applications in biomedicine, next-generation materials, and computing, among others. Cells within tissue change shape and mechanics by re-organizing their cytoskeleton. Consisting of long persistence length polymeric structures, such as actin and intermediate filaments as well as microtubules, the cytoskeleton is assembled into networks through the action of binding proteins that interface multiple cytoplasmic polymers together in varying arrangements. Diverse and dynamic polymeric networks that make up the cytoskeleton impart unique mechanics to individual cells and across tissue, leading to phenomena such as superelasticity. This project aims to develop in vitro actin crosslinkers that are light sensitive. In this way, purified actin networks, and thereby their physical properties, such as stiffness, can be controlled dynamically with light. Our ultimate goal is to encapsulate actin filaments in adhered synthetic cells (micron-sized lipid bilayer vesicles) with light-activated crosslinkers tethered to inner membranes (. By illuminating select vesicles, dynamic mechanical patterning of a synthetic cell-based material can be realized, bringing us one step closer to mimicking the transformations of living tissue synthetically.