Center: MRSEC for Advanced Electronic Materials (AEM)

Nontechnical Description The Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at Columbia University, the Center for Advanced Electronic Materials (AEM), unites scientists and engineers from chemistry, physics, and engineering to discover and design quantum materials that move and process information far more efficiently than today's technologies allow. Conventional electronics carry information by pushing electrical charge through wires, which wastes energy as heat and limits how small and fast devices can become. The research team creates quantum materials in which information instead travels as organized waves that lose very little energy, and it explores new states of matter that emerge when materials are gently steered by light or by electromagnetic fields. This work advances national priorities in semiconductors and quantum information sciences and points toward a future generation of low-power computing and communication. The Center is equally devoted to people, training a materials-science workforce at every stage from kindergarten through graduate and postdoctoral study. The Center brings hands-on science to hundreds of thousands of learners and strengthens the Nation's leadership in advanced materials. Technical Description The AEM Center pursues its mission through two Interdisciplinary Research Groups (IRGs). The first IRG, Advanced Semiconductors for Coherent Charge-Neutral Information Flow, develops atomically thin van der Waals semiconductors that host coherent, long-lived collective excitations, including spin waves and electric-dipole waves that arise from magnetic, ferroelectric, and altermagnetic order, and uses them to carry information across device-relevant distances with very little energy loss. The research team integrates theory, crystal growth, ultrafast and optical spectroscopy, nanofabrication, imaging, and electrical transport to answer fundamental questions about how these excitations interact, propagate, and preserve coherence, with the goal of unifying electronics and photonics for ultralow-power information platforms. The second IRG, Non-equilibrium Quantum Metamaterials, co-designs materials platforms, including van der Waals heterostructures, misfit superlattices, and molecular crystals, together with engineered electromagnetic environments such as optical cavities, to stabilize quantum phases that have no equilibrium counterpart, among them cavity-modified superconductivity, light-engineered topological states, and hidden fractional states, and it does so without relying on intense laser pulses. This theory-led research establishes quantitative design rules for creating and reconfiguring quantum matter far from equilibrium. The intellectual merit of the project lies in merging distinct forms of order and in controlling matter beyond its equilibrium limits, opening routes to dissipation-free information processing and reconfigurable quantum hardware. The broader impacts include advancing United States leadership in semiconductors and quantum information science, generating intellectual property and sustained industrial collaborations, operating shared electron-microscopy and scanning-probe facilities that serve hundreds of academic and industrial users in the New York region, and educating a skilled STEM workforce. The research is conducted in a manner consistent with federal guidance on Gold Standard Science. 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.