Materials Research Laboratory

Susan Rosevear (center), education officer for MIT Materials Research Laboratory’s Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, instructs students from the Putnam Avenue Upper School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, how to build a simple direct current (DC) motor.

Cambridge middle school students explore materials science at MIT

Materials Research Science and Engineering Center welcomed area students for lessons in glassblowing, making motors, and making ice cream.

October 11, 2019

Traditional structure-based representations of the many forms of zeolites, some of which are illustrated here, provide little guidance as to how they can convert to other forms, but a new graph-based system does a much better job.

A new mathematical approach to understanding zeolites

Study of minerals widely used in industrial processes could lead to discovery of new materials for catalysis and filtering.

October 7, 2019

MIT Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering Juejun (JJ) Hu

3 Questions: How artificial intelligence is supercharging materials science

Associate Professor Juejun Hu shines a light on the impact machine learning and AI are having on materials science and engineering.

October 3, 2019

MIT physics graduate student Dahlia Klein (left) and postdoc David MacNeill showed that magnetic order and stacking order are very strongly linked in two-dimensional magnets such as chromium chloride and chromium iodide, giving engineers a tool to vary the material’s magnetic properties.

Controlling 2-D magnetism with stacking order

MIT researchers discover why magnetism in certain materials is different in atomically thin layers and their bulk forms.

September 30, 2019

High school teammates display the DC motor they made before a Dustbusting by Design spin-off competition at MIT. The event is the culmination of the MRL MRSEC / EECS summer Women’s Technology Program.

Workshop teaches high school girls and educators to build motors

Materials Research Laboratory’s Materials Research Science and Engineering Center sponsors a motor-building workshop.

September 16, 2019

Left to right: Postdoc Shu Fen Tan, graduate student Kate Reidy, and Professor Frances Ross, all of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, sit in front of a high vacuum evaporator system.

Creating new opportunities from nanoscale materials

MIT Professor Frances Ross is pioneering new techniques to study materials growth and how structure relates to performance.

September 5, 2019

Edbert Jarvis Sie (right) and Timm Rohwer, members of the Gedik research group at MIT, are pushing the boundaries of condensed-matter physics with their time-resolved XUV ARPES setup.

Watching electrons using extreme ultraviolet light

MIT researchers have developed a new technique to reveal the uncharted dynamics of electrons in materials.

August 19, 2019

A crystal of bismuth has a staircase-like appearance because of the repeating honeycomb-like structure of its atoms. Researchers at MIT, along with colleagues elsewhere, have conducted a theoretical analysis to reveal several previously unidentified topological properties of bismuth. One such property makes bismuth a robust electronic conductor along its edges where horizontal and vertical faces m...

New insights into bismuth’s character

Theorists at MIT and collaborators uncover hidden topological insulator states in bismuth crystals.

August 6, 2019

Summer 2019 MIT and FIT AFFOA Workshop in Advanced Functional Fabrics participants

MIT and Fashion Institute of Technology join forces to create innovative textiles

Advanced functional fabrics workshop, held jointly with AFFOA and industrial partner New Balance, develops concepts for biodegradable footwear, active textiles.

July 17, 2019

MIT Associate Professor Jennifer Rupp stands in front of a pulsed laser deposition chamber, in which her team developed a new lithium garnet electrolyte material with the fastest reported ionic conductivity of its type. The technique produces a thin film about 330 nanometers thick. “Having the lithium electrolyte as a solid-state very fast conductor allows you to dream out loud of anything else ...

Enriching solid-state batteries

MIT researchers demonstrate a method to make a smaller, safer, and faster lithium-rich ceramic electrolyte.

July 11, 2019

Researchers at MIT and Singapore University of Technology (SUTD) have demonstrated a micro ring resonator made of amorphous silicon carbide with the highest quality factor to date.

Micro ring resonator has highest silicon carbide quality factor to date

MIT, Singapore researchers show high-quality photonic device based on amorphous silicon carbide.

July 8, 2019

A domain wall (gray panel at center) separates regions with different spin orientations (green and blue arrows). MIT researchers discovered that a magnetic field applied at one particular angle through a single crystal of a new magnetic quantum material makes it harder for electrons to cross this domain wall.

Approaching the magnetic singularity

MIT researchers discover a material that changes electrical resistance only when a magnetic field is applied at a narrowly confined angle.

June 20, 2019