Equipment: MRI: Track #1 Acquisition of a Physical Property Measurement System for Interdisciplinary Research and Education on Next Generation Materials

The creation of next-generation materials is essential for a broad range of applications, as well as tests of fundamental physical and chemical theory. Complete characterization of the properties of these new materials is required in order to realize and deploy them in a variety of technologies. This project uses a Quantum Design Physical Property Measurement System (PPMS), a versatile and highly configurable instrument to measure electrical, magnetic, thermal transport, and thermodynamic properties of materials over a broad range of temperatures and pressures. As such, the instrument addresses an array of problems spanning the basic science, applied science, and engineering of new materials and devices. The instrument is advancing the fundamental physics, chemistry, and materials science of superconducting materials, quantum materials, thermoelectrics, energy storage materials, superhard materials, novel nanoscale materials, and semiconductor and superconductor-based electronic devices. The instrument is enabling research and student and postdoctoral training supported by numerous research grants of Senior Personnel at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) and of many collaborators at other institutions. The instrument is integrated into the student education and training activities of UIC, an urban minority-serving Research 1 institution near downtown Chicago, and is accessible to a large number of external collaborators both nationally and internationally. The instrument is enabling progress in the discovery, characterization, and synthesis of a variety of new materials over a broad range of pressures and temperatures. In particular, the system is advancing experimental studies of room-temperature superconductivity to megabar (>100 GPa) pressures, including efforts to create such materials at or near ambient pressure; unconventional superconductors and topological materials such as Weyl semimetals; synthesis and characterization of complex oxide thin films; novel electronic and magnetic oxides, including studies of the effects of charge transfer, strain, and spin-state transitions on the properties of these oxides; the effects of embedded nanoparticles on thermal transport properties of oxide thermoelectrics; qubits based on two-dimensional materials such as novel lateral heterostructures or novel structures; layered two-dimensional heterostructures of transition metal dichalcogenides; wide band gap materials such as gallium nitride and diamond, and the discovery of next-generation functional superhard materials. Experimental work is guided in part by theorists who are actively involved in the planning of these efforts. The proposed system is cryogen-free, and the specific configuration includes four-probe direct current (DC) resistivity, alternating current (AC) electrical transport (resistivity, Hall effect), AC magnetic susceptibility, DC magnetization, and thermal transport (conductivity, Seebeck coefficient, thermoelectric figure of merit), and has special capabilities for measurements in extreme conditions. The system is integrated into the UIC Research Resources Center (RRC) and complements an array of other materials analysis capabilities available in the facility. The RRC is a centralized core facility that provides access to any internal and external (including industrial) users for an hourly fee. Such instrument access is managed via an online booking system and instrumentation access is available 24/7. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.