Center: MIT Materials Research Science and Engineering Center

Nontechnical Description The MIT Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) pursues disruption through materials, seeking to realize societal benefits by disrupting critical technologies. The MRSEC identifies opportunities for disruption through research in two complementary lines of materials research: (1) medical imaging, and (2) metals production and semiconductor synthesis. In the first line of research, the team models, designs, and fabricates X-ray detector materials at the nanometer (one billionth of a meter) scale; this allows tremendous gains in the resolution of X-ray-based medical imaging, which in turn improves diagnoses and reduces cancer risk. In the second line of research, the team develops a fundamental understanding of high temperature sulfur-based liquids; this improves the yield and efficiency of producing critical metals such as copper, iron, and neodymium, and also enables scalable synthesis and manufacturing of sulfur-based semiconductors that are relevant for energy conversion technologies. Additional opportunities for disruptive real-world impact are pursued through an Industry-Academia Collaborative Seed Program. Beyond materials research, The MIT MRSEC is also a hub for outreach and hands-on education and training. It develops a public outreach effort that tells stories of real-world historical disasters caused by materials failure, and how subsequent disasters have been averted through disruptive breakthroughs in Materials Science and Engineering (MSE). Its multi-tiered internship program targets gaps in MSE education, facilitates pathways to MSE careers across skill levels, and delivers specific outcomes for participation with quantifiable cross-sector impact including industry internships. Technical Description The MIT MRSEC pursues materials research in two interdisciplinary research groups (IRGs). IRG 1, Engineered Metamaterials for Nanophotonic Scintillators, enables breakthroughs in medical imaging by re-engineering scintillators as nanostructured metamaterials through advances in multiscale modeling, inverse design, and nanofabrication. The resulting scintillator metamaterials are expected to deliver a factor of 10-to-100 enhancement of spatial resolution, a factor of 10 reduction in emission time, and least 3 bins of energy resolution, enabling improved patient diagnoses with lower radiation doses. Additional impacts include improved detector technology for industrial quality control, environmental assessments, nuclear safety inspection, and security screening. IRG 2, Chalcogenide Melts for Advanced Materials Processing, pursues fundamental understanding of structure-property relationships in high-temperature chalcogenide melts that are promising for use as electrolytes for electrometallurgy, and as growth fluxes for semiconductor synthesis. Success enables electrification of production of critical metals including Cu, Fe, and Nd, at rates 2-to-3 times higher than the existing industrial Hall-Héroult process for aluminum, from feedstocks that are otherwise not economically viable. IRG 2 also enables synthesis of chalcogenide perovskite semiconducting thin films under conditions compatible with thin-film solar cell manufacturing. 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.