We explore materials that are hard and have a fixed shape, often referred to as solids or condensed matter. We work on creating new materials that might be useful for electronic devices and try to figure out all the things that make them work the way they do. Why is it important to learn about and find new materials that are hard and have a fixed shape? Silicon (Si) is a great example of how finding new materials can change the world. Silicon is really important for making electronic devices like smartphones, tablets, and laptops. Can you imagine not having these things in your life?
There are many possibilities for future technology, such as phones you can wear or computers that fit on your wrist, like in science fiction movies. Smartwatches are cool examples of this kind of technology, but they aren’t quite as advanced as we’d like them to be yet. If we want to make even better and smaller electronic devices, we need to find materials that are even better than silicon.
So, we study solids, materials that are hard and have a fixed shape. Our research focus is on finding new materials that have the potential to change technology in big ways. We create new materials by mixing different chemicals and then check if they can be helpful in different ways by testing them.
Making new materials is, believe it or not, like cooking! Some materials have their recipes, so one can simply follow the recipes. Some don’t have one, so you have to improvise it or plan ahead, of course, based on educated guesses. For example, in cooking, if you want to make a new type of noodle dish, you know at least your main ingredient is flour or something similar to make noodles. The main ingredient can’t be vegetables. Then, you make noodles, prepare other ingredients like vegetables, mix them together, and cook them. Even if you are making a new dish that has never been made before, there are some steps you would follow based on your experience or knowledge of cooking. It is similar but simpler in our research. Our main ingredients are various chemicals. We mix some chemicals in some ratio and simply bake them, just like cooking, or more likely baking. Then ta-da, we get some literally hard materials, solids. We may not get what we want to get just like the stone-hard dark thingy from your first attempt at baking chocolate cookies. We tweak our own recipe and try again until we get what we want. And sometimes you get something totally unexpected – super delicious chocolate-fudged cookies.
When we get a new solid from our oven (yes, we are really using ovens that can be heated up to ~2200 F), we test it to understand its properties. We want to know what is really inside. But we can’t really see what’s inside with our bare eyes, so here’s why we need a superpower, x-ray vision. Don’t worry if you don’t have the power. We have an x-ray in our lab! The x-ray machine we use in the lab is different from the x-ray machines used in hospitals, as it is specifically designed for solid materials. Wait, are we using a different x-ray? No. We use the same x-ray but how it is applied to solids and human bodies is different. We use a technique called Bragg diffraction, which uses a mathematical formula to help us understand the properties of the solid.
Simply, for a given x-ray, you get angle information which in turn gives you the information of what’s inside the materials and how they are connected to each other (to be honest, you need more than angles to know the complete structure of the material. All such information is given by X-ray measurements.)
We can also learn about what is called the magnetism of the material. Some materials have magnetism which can be viewed, in the simplest form, as having tiny bar magnets inside. And those magnets arrange in various ways and show magnetism. We can also study magnetism in our lab.
The more we study materials, the better we understand them. This means we can create new materials with even better electrical and magnetic properties, that will be the building blocks of future electronic devices like smartphones, laptops, tablets and more!
Are you ready for the fun??
We offer a high school physics internship program once a year, usually late January or early February. We welcome high school students in Shorewood and Whitefish Bay in Wisconsin. If you are interested in this program, stay tuned! Your science teacher will let you know the opportunity!