Category Materials Colloquium

Zoom: https://ethz.zoom.us/j/65491333976

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Open Access – funding opportunities and requirements within and outside ETH Zurich

Rainer Rees Mertins (ETH library – Open Access specialist)

The transformation in scholarly publishing is reflected in the increasing importance of open access, which is  becoming the new standard. The rapid growth of Open Access has been fueled by several factors. One of the most important being the requirements of science funders to make publicly funded research results available to the public. Nevertheless, many scientists also support open access publishing because they are skeptical towards the traditional publishers, the facilitated re-use of publications and the higher citation rates of open access publications. The talk will cover background information on open access and its advantages, but will mainly focus on the practical aspects and how ETH members can publish open access either via library funding or as green open access in the Research Collection. The open access requirements of the
most important funders as well as the institutional open access policy will also be covered.

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Materials design for fast charge storage enabled by the mechanistic insights

Maria Lukatskaya (Electrochemical Energy Systems Laboratory – D-MAVT)

As electronic technology advances, the need in safe and long-lasting energy storage devices that occupy minimum volume arises. Short charging times of several seconds to minutes, with energy densities comparable to batteries, can be achieved in pseudocapacitors: a sub-class of supercapacitors, where capacitance is mediated by fast redox reactions and thus enables at least an order of magnitude more energy to be stored than in typical double layer capacitors. However, traditional pseudocapacitive materials are often high in cost and/or suffer from low cycling stability.
In my talk, I will discuss how the key performance metrics of pseudocapacitors – capacitance and charging rates – can be pushed to the limits in the materials that combine good electrical and ionic conductivities (ensuring fast charge transfer and hence charging rates) with high density of redox-active sites. In particular, I will discuss the electrochemistry of 2D transition metal carbides (MXenes) and 2D conductive metal-organic frameworks, with an emphasis on the mechanism of charge storage and electrode design.

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Current-driven magnetic domain-wall logic

Zhaochu Luo (Mesoscopic Systems – D-MATL)

Development of complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) logic is expected to approach its fundamental limit as the scaling down of the CMOS technology is reaching an end. As a route to extend the technology roadmap beyond traditional CMOS logic, novel spin-based logic architectures are being developed to provide nonvolatile data retention, near-zero leakage, and scalability. In particular, architectures based on magnetic domain walls (DWs) take the advantage of the fast motion, high density, non-volatility and flexible design of DWs to process and store information. Such schemes have so far relied on DW manipulation and clocking using an external magnetic field, which hinders their implementation in dense, large-scale chips. Here we demonstrate a method for performing all-electric logic operations and cascading using DW racetracks. Our concept for the magnetic DW logic is based on current-induced DW motion in magnetic nanowires with tunable magnetic anisotropy and chiral interactions. Our work provides a viable platform for scalable all-electric magnetic logic, which could be used for memory-in-logic applications.

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Straining films: a versatile design tool for ferroic materials

Kathrin Dörr (Martin Luther University Halle, Germany)

There is nearly no strain-free thin film on a substrate, and such films are a foundation of modern technologies. Therefore, it has been learned long ago how to exploit film stress / strain for designing electronic properties of common semiconductors. For ferroic (magnetic or ferroelectric) materials like oxides and polymers, strain can be an efficient design tool, too. However, many strain-driven phenomena are yet to be discovered and modelled, because these materials have a more complex structure and physics background. In this talk, recently established approaches to apply different kinds of film strain in ferroic materials are introduced. These include tip-induced nano-strain in force microscopy, electric strain control with piezoelectric substrates, “strain doping“ with helium atoms and “symmetry strain“ transfer at oxide interfaces. The usefulness of such tools for straining films will be shown in examples for controlling crystal symmetries, domain configurations, and switching times – or simply for measuring strain-dependent properties.

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The assembly of non-equilibrium biologically-inspired materials

Michael Murrell (Laboratory of Living Matter, Yale University)

Incorporating growth, adaptation and responsiveness to external cues remain as grand challenges in materials engineering and design. In living cells, the cell cytoskeleton is a dynamic protein-based polymeric scaffolding material, driven from thermodynamic equilibrium through the enzymatic consumption of chemical energy. This consumption in turn leads to time-irreversibility in molecular interactions and the breaking of detailed balance. Through the extent that detailed balance is broken, the cytoskeleton can grow, remodel itself, and adapt to both internal and external mechanical loads – essential processes for controlling the physical behaviors of the cell such as cell division or cell migration. Here, we reconstitute the cell cytoskeleton in vitro, and experimentally control the breaking of detailed balance on the microscopic scale to outline large-scale non-equilibrium dynamical and material phase transitions and characterize the emergence of novel material properties. In doing so, we learn how material properties relate to the physical behaviors of the cell and also identify a framework for how to encode novel capabilities into the engineering of non-equilibrium “active” materials.

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Nanomechanics in lean Mg alloys: a length scale appraisal

Indranil Basu (Laboratory of Metal Physics and Technology, DMATL)

Most conventional metallic materials display a trade-off effect associated with their strength-ductility values, often highlighted by the well-known banana-shaped variation of strength vs. ductility. A major challenge, therefore, is to engineer novel microstructures in metallic materials that can successfully evade this inverse strength-ductility relationship. In this regard, one of the most potent design aspect pertains to exploiting the local scale compositional fluctuations and microstructural heterogeneities across different length scales, wherein different phases or grain orientations display varying elastic stiffness and strain accommodation mechanisms.
Magnesium (Mg) alloys with attractive weight-saving properties have seen an increased demand in various applications such as automotive, aerospace, biomedical and communications industries. However, the prospect of developing low cost, lean high strength-high ductility Mg alloys though highly lucrative still remains an elusive problem owing to the strong mechanical anisotropy displayed by Mg that often renders it unsuitable of commercial processing. In this work, it is shown that by intelligent alloying methodologies and processing conditions, nanoscale heterogeneities arising from local scale compositional fluctuations are able to drive synergistic strengthening and ductility response in Mg alloys. The findings throw light to a paradigm shift in the role of Mg as an emerging class of structural materials.

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