MRSEC: Center for the Science and Engineering of Materials

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，加州理工学院材料科学与工程中心（CSEM）将继续履行其作为一个多方面的材料研究和教育中心的使命。CSEM将世界一流的材料研究项目组织为跨学科研究小组和种子研究项目，同时为南加州少数族裔本科生、社区学院和高中学生提供教育项目，并通过电视大众媒体节目为公众提供服务。该中心将在几个领域解决材料科学的研究和教育方面的问题：1)大分子材料的设计，以产生对细胞粘附和生长的定制反应；Ii)新型铁电光子材料，为调整光子材料和器件的色散关系提供了新的自由，并为利用光来理解复杂材料行为的科学进步提供了新的途径；iii)基于大块金属玻璃复合材料的先进结构材料，有可能使新型非晶结构材料具有比钢高得多的强度-重量比。CSEM还通过种子项目支持新兴研究领域，这些项目将重点关注i)通过甲醇生产化学储存氢的催化材料和基于“超质子”固体酸的非聚合物燃料电池的使用；ii)有机半导体/铁磁异质结构的自旋电子和光电子特性及其在未来电子和量子计算设备中的应用。

Under renewed NSF support, The Center for the Science and Engineering of Materials (CSEM) at Caltech will carry forward its mission as a multifaceted materials research and education center. CSEM combines world-class materials research programs organized as interdisciplinary research groups and seed research projects, with educational programs serving underrepresented minority undergraduate, community college, and high school students across Southern California and also serving the general public via television-based mass media programming. The Center will address both research and educational aspects of materials science in several areas: i) Macromolecular materials design to produce tailored responses to cellular adhesion and growth; ii) novel ferroelectric photonic materials that enable new freedoms in tuning the dispersion relations for photonic materials and devices and offer a new avenue for scientific progress in using light to understand complex materials behavior; and iii) advanced structural materials based on bulk metallic glass composites, with the potential to enable new amorphous structural materials with strength-to-weight ratio much higher than steel. CSEM also supports emerging research areas via seed projects, which will focus on i) catalytic materials for chemical storage of hydrogen via methanol production and use in nonpolymer fuel cells based on "superprotonic" solid acids and ii) spintronic and optoelectronic properties of organic semiconductor/ferromagnetic heterostructures with applications in future electronic and quantum computing devices.