Two Ph.D. candidates in materials science and engineering at UC Davis will reside at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to conduct research as part of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research Program.
New research published in Physical Review Letters shows how an experiment with lasers and magnets resulted in the domain walls within ferromagnetic layers moving at previously unheard-of speeds, paving the way for more sustainable and energy-efficient data storage.
Materials science and engineering professor Marina Leite has received $1 million to make switchable photonic devices more efficient with hybrid perovskites, a class of materials with physical properties that can be controlled through light alone.
The inside of a living cell is crowded with large, complex molecules. New research on how these molecules could spontaneously organize themselves could further our understanding of how cells manage their essential biochemistry in the crowded space.
For fourth-year materials science and engineering Ph.D. candidate Peifen Lyu, the decision to attend UC Davis is a personal one. Lyu works in the field of photonics, but has seen the effects of marble mining firsthand in her hometown.
We all have experience with water turning from solid to liquid to gas and back again.
But knowing what happens scientifically during those transitions is an essential, yet unanswered scientific question that Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering Jeremy Mason and his research group are pursuing.
Researchers at the University of California, Davis College of Engineering are using machine learning to identify new materials for high-efficiency solar cells. Using high-throughput experiments and machine learning-based algorithms, they have found it is possible to forecast the materials’ dynamic behavior with very high accuracy, without the need to perform as many experiments.
Peifen Lyu ’19, Ph.D. ’25 has created a magnesium-based nanoscale optical device that dissolves in water and changes colors in displays. It creates a color change across several applications, such as a coating for pills or as sensors in environmental science for testing different chemical compositions.
Materials Science and Engineering Ph.D. candidate Cassondra Brayfield was named a recipient of the Cadence Diversity in Technology Scholarship under its Women in Technology program. Brayfield was selected based on leadership skills, recognition of accomplishments, endorsement from professors, and drive to shape the world of technology.
With support from the Department of Energy Office of Science’s Graduate Student Research program, Materials Science and Engineering Ph.D. student Dayne Sasaki will be using the Advanced Light Source (ALS) at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab to conduct groundbreaking research that combines the fields of artificial spin ices and complex oxides.
The first generation of computers used vacuum tubes. The second, transistors and the third, integrated circuits. Each new generation allowed computers to be faster, smaller and more energy efficient. Now, as the world stretches beyond the limits of integrated circuits, what does the fourth generation of computing look like?
Materials Science and Engineering Ph.D. candidate Pallavi D. Sambre is taking the first steps toward engineering lifelike artificial materials that reconstitute a cell’s ability to change their membrane shape to move from one part of the body to another.
Second-year materials science and engineering Ph.D. student Margaret Duncan, part of Associate Professor Marina Leite’s lab, received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship. The fellowship is the oldest and one of the most prestigious of its kind and it recognizes and supports outstanding STEM graduate students who have the potential to become knowledgeable experts and significantly contribute to research, teaching, and innovation.
UC Davis engineers are innovating at high and low temperatures to enable travel at hypersonic speeds and sustainably keep food safe and fresh, respectively.
Materials Science and Engineering Assistant Professor Scott McCormack and his team received $1.4M from the Air Force Office of Science and Research to reduce uncertainty and standardized processing techniques for ultra-high temperature ceramics.
Ultra-high temperature ceramics (UHTCs) are ceramic materials that melt at temperatures above 3000˚C, nearly 5500˚F. Their ability to withstand extreme heat loads makes them ideal for building hypersonic vehicles and platforms, but UHTCs can be difficult to process reliably.
Materials Science and Engineering Associate Professor Roopali Kukreja has received the prestigious National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (NSF CAREER) Award.
Materials Science and Engineering Assistant Professor Seung Sae Hong recently received a prestigious National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (NSF CAREER) Award. The CAREER award is the agency’s highest honor for young faculty. It recognizes those with the potential to be leaders in their fields and funds five-year research and education projects that should serve as the foundation for their careers.
In the spring of 2021, a team of undergraduate students at UC Davis collaborated with Elcon Precision on a project as part of the EMS 188 course. The students were excited to explore the question of nucleation and discoloration in high calcia alumina.
Professor Ricardo Castro teaches engineering students to think outside the box and to contemplate the unlikely, but not always impossible, real-world applications of materials science based on the powers of superheroes.
Optimizing the performance of electrolytes used in alternative energy technologies such as solid oxide fuel cells, and batteries relies on measuring and understanding the transport of oxide and lithium (Li) ions (O2- and Li+) and/or protons (H+) in ceramic materials.
Materials science and engineering (MSE) former undergraduate researcher Joyce Christiansen-Salameh has developed a new way to analyze complex x-ray nano-diffraction datasets using a k-means clustering algorithm. The program iteratively groups data points by clustering pixels with similar intensity within a certain distance on the detector, which makes it easier to find the Bragg peaks that reveal the structure.
Materials science and engineering associate professor Marina Leite thinks machine learning is key to the next big breakthrough in renewable energy. With a new three-year grant from the National Science Foundation, Leite will use machine learning techniques to study perovskite solar cells, a class of highly efficient but volatile devices, to find the optimal conditions to run them reliably.
Though their optical and electrical properties are very promising, perovskites are a class of materials that are still understudied. Until researchers have a better understanding of their overall properties, they can’t learn how to control them to create ubiquitous devices like solar cells, LEDs and photodetectors.
A new NSF-funded project at UC Davis aims to give researchers “recipes” for consistent and optimized structures of nanoporous gold—a material with potential applications in a variety of fields.
