Cornell’s Platform for the Accelerated Realization, Analysis, and Discovery of Interface Materials (PARADIM) has received a second award of $22.5 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fund another five years, enabling scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs nationwide to design and create new inorganic materials for use in electronics.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a renewal of funding for the Materials Innovation Platform (MIP) national user facility at Penn State’s Materials Research Institute (MRI), the Two-Dimensional Crystal Consortium (2DCC). The 2DCC, which has many users from the Eberly College of Science, is one of four MIPs in the United States and was awarded $20.1 million over five years, an increase of 13% above the initial award in 2016.

To accelerate complex glycomaterials research in the U.S., the National Science Foundation (NSF) has committed $23 million to a new multiuniversity partnership, led by Virginia Tech. The partnership will bring together leading scientists and engineers from Virginia Tech, the University of Georgia, Brandeis University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to establish an NSF Materials Innovation Platform called GlycoMIP focused on “Automating the Synthesis of Rationally Designed Glycomaterials.”

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has named UC Santa Barbara and UCLA joint partners in the BioPolymers, Automated Cellular Infrastructure, Flow, and Integrated Chemistry: Materials Innovation Platform (BioPACIFIC MIP). The five-year, $23.7 million collaboration is part of the NSF Materials Innovation Platforms (MIP) Program and has a scientific methodology reflecting the broad goals of the Materials Genome Initiative, which aims to develop new materials “twice as fast at a fraction of the cost.”

Johns Hopkins' groundbreaking bulk crystal growth facility, part of one of four materials innovation platforms supported by the National Science Foundation, has received a $5 million renewal grant that will allow scientists to continue designing and creating new materials there for the next generation of electronic devices.

The U.S. National Science Foundation funds fundamental research to enhance U.S. competitiveness, economy, and people's lives. The Materials Innovation Platforms (MIPs) program was initiated in 2015 in response to national needs in mid-scale research infrastructure for accelerating materials research. "Materials Innovations Platforms represent a new modality for supporting scientific research," says Linda Sapochak, director of the Division of Materials Research at NSF. "The MIP program provides the required infrastructure made available to a diverse set of stakeholders to support transdisciplinary research and training, to provide broad access to cutting-edge tools, and to facilitate data and knowledge sharing in key enabling areas of national priority."

The BioPACIFIC MIP X-ray Diffraction Platform features an unparalleled laboratory SAXS-WAXS (small- and wide-angle x-ray scattering) beamline for high-throughput characterization of biopolymers and nanostructures. Custom-developed by a research team at UCSB, the new X-Ray instrument offers performance level comparable to a second-generation synchrotron but on a benchtop instrument, to help scientists elucidate materials structure in the nano- and meso-scale.

There’s a new shared-use electron microscope at UCLA for investigators seeking to elucidate the atomic structures of bio-sourced monomers and small molecules. The NSF’s BioPACIFIC MIP now offers access to its ThermoFisher Scientific Spectra 300C transmission electron microscope (TEM) housed at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA.

BioPACIFIC MIP has added two new printers to the Additive Manufacturing facility at UC Santa Barbara. Both printers are accessible at no cost through the BioPACIFIC MIP User Program and proposal process.

A research partnership between Penn State and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) could enable an improved method to make a new type of semiconductor that is a few atoms thin and interacts with light in an unusual way. This new semiconductor could lead to new computing and communications technologies that use lower amounts of energy than current electronics.