MRSEC: Micro- and Nano- Mechanics of Materials

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Brown University's MRSEC has a research thrust in the area of Mechanics of Materials. Mechanics issues abound across the full scope of advanced and emerging materials. Strong, tough and durable lightweight and high-temperature structural materials are a direct route to energy efficiency. In electronics, the defects that degrade devices are nucleated by high stresses, and the control of stress during device fabrication is a major issue. Yet, stress can drive the formation of useful structures such as quantum dots. There are a host of biological phenomena wherein stress is a primary driving force. Mechanics is thus an integral part of the invention, design and representation of material behavior across the full spectrum of functional systems. Research in the center will emphasize three areas: (i) the mechanics of thin film and small-scale structures, focusing on their formation, stability, and creation of stress during growth, (ii) the mechanics of complex multiphase materials, focusing on the prediction and mechanisms of deformation, fracture and fatigue at micron- and nanometer size scales, and (iii) the mechanics of adhesion in biological systems, focusing on quantifying ranges of material behavior discriminating between normal and abnormal cell function. The Center also has a broad spectrum of educational and outreach programs with the broad goals of exposing young students to the excitement of science; providing teachers with the tools needed to enhance science in their classrooms; exposing undergraduate students to high-level research while providing an environment for minorities and women that presents graduate education as an attractive career path; and enhance new undergraduate engineering programs at partner institutions. The education component of the Center is run by participating MRSEC faculty, and is thus intimately connected to the research efforts and the undergraduate and graduate teaching. The Center involves about twenty Brown faculty predominantly from the Division of Engineering, and also manages a host of central experimental research facilities, such as scanning electron microscope and molecular-beam epitaxy, that are available to the Brown community and industrial users. The Center participants interact with researchers across the world and have collaborative programs with a number of industries, most notably General Motors, in which the unique capabilities developed in fundamental MRSEC research are applied to problems of technological importance.