A team led by Evgeny Tsymbal, George Holmes Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, was one of 25 in the nation funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer Our Future (DMREF) program. Tsymbal is also a researcher on Nebraska's NSF EPSCoR-funded Emergent Quantum Materials and Technologies (EQUATE) collaboration.
In the new research, Moire-Engineered Oxide Membrane Heterostructures by Design, twisted oxide heterostructures are artificial materials made by stacking two or more complex oxide thin layers on top of each other with a twist angle — meaning one layer is rotated relative to the other. This nanoscale twist creates a moiré pattern at the interface — a repeating interference pattern that changes the local atomic arrangement and the electronic environment. According to the project's abstract, this work can dramatically alter the material’s properties and create novel functionalities useful for applications.
This four-year project began October 1. The research aims to design, create, and understand novel electronic, magnetic, and structural phases emerging in free-standing oxide membranes assembled into twisted heterostructures. The work combines advanced materials characterization techniques with theoretical modeling and data analytics to accelerate the discovery and development of new materials with engineered properties. The project involves a U.S.-Israel collaboration supported by the Binational Science Foundation (BSF). Educational and outreach activities with this project are aimed to advance workforce development through interdisciplinary training of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in integrated experimental and theoretical approaches to materials research.
With a total of $2 million in project support and a goal of getting advanced materials to market faster and cheaper, Tsymbal and his DMREF project team apply theory, data science, and artificial intelligence in advanced synthetic and characterization techniques to discover novel materials and optimize their properties.
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