Research

Seed Program

The MRSEC Seed program is administered and funded in partnership with the Materials Research Institute. MRSEC/MRI Seed Grants support new high-risk/high-reward lines of research with the prospect to develop into significant new research programs at Penn State. Seed grant proposals can address any innovative interdisciplinary topic that cuts across the fields of materials, biology, science and/or engineering at the nanoscale. These grants are intended to break new ground, ideally through interdisciplinary approaches or multidisciplinary collaborations, rather than to augment existing projects. The grants provide up to $40,000-$50,000 for projects of 1-2 years duration. The students or post-docs supported with these funds will be expected to participate in MRSEC outreach activities. Below is a listing of recent seed projects.

How to apply for a Seed Grant

2011 Seed Projects

• "Defect Engineering of 2-D Sheets of Layered Materials," Mauricio Terrones (Phys.), Eric Hudson (Phys.), Tom Mallouk (Chem.), Jun Zhu (Phys.), Zhiwen Liu (Elec. Eng.)

2010 Seed Projects

• "Nanostructured Phase Change Building Blocks for Optical Metamaterials," Raymond Schaak (Chem.) and Kyle Bishop (Chem. Eng.)
• "New Roto Symmetries and Properties in Complex Oxides," Susan Trolier-McKinstry (MatSE) and Venkatraman Gopalan (MatSE)
• "Spin Polarization Control in Graphene," Jun Zhu (Phys.) and Nitin Samarth (Phys.)
• "Charge Transfer Complex Organic Photovoltaics," J. Asbury (Chem.), V. Crespi (Phys.), E. Gomez (Chem. Eng.), and M. Hickner (MatSE)

2009 Seed Projects

• "Ferroic Coupling and the Role of Dimensionality in Ruddlesden-Popper Complex Oxides," C. Fennie (Cornell), D.G. Schlom (Cornell), I. Takeuchi (Maryland), and V. Gopalan (MatSE)
• "Materials Engineering of Hybrid Systems for Quantum Information Processing," N. Samarth (PHYS), T. Mayer (EE), and D. Awschalom (UCSB)
• "Enzyme-Assisted Directed Motion at the Nanoscale," A. Sen (CHEM), P. Butler (BioEng), and S. Phillips (CHEM)

2008 Seed Projects

• "Hierarchical Morphology Control and Charge Carrier Dynamics in Organic Photovoltaics," J. B. Asbury (CHEM), M. A. Hickner (MatSE)
• "Understanding and Harvesting Biomimetic Molecular Motors for Active Plasmonics," T. J. Huang (ESM), L. Jensen (CHEM)
• "Correlation of Biological Constraints and Electricity Production Using a Micro Microbial Fuel Cell (MMFC)," J. M. Regan (CEE), M. Mensch (ME), T. J. Huang (ESM)
• "Vapor Phase Additive Pattern Transfer and Selective Surface Modifications of Microstructured Optical Fibers (MOFs)," D. L. Allara (CHEM), J. V. Badding (CHEM) and T. Mallouk (CHEM)

2007 Seed Projects

• "Bottom-up Assembly of Ordered Metamaterials," D. L. Allara (CHEM), J. V. Badding (CHEM), G. Mahan (PHYS), S. Mohney (MatSE), T. Mayer (EE), J. Sofo (PHYS), A. Sen (CHEM)
• "Bloch Oscillations in 1D Nanowires," J. Jain (PHYS), T. Mayer (EE), J. Redwing (MatSE), J. Zhu (PHYS)

2006 Seed Projects

• "Bottom-up Assembly of Cluster-Based Electronic Metamaterials," D. L. Allara (CHEM), J.V. Badding (CHEM), G.D. Mahan (PHYS), S.E. Mohney (MatSE), T.S. Mayer (EE), J. Sofo (PHYS), and A. Sen (CHEM)
• "Strain-Enabled Multiferroics," D.G. Schlom (MatSE), L.Q. Chen (MatSE), V. Gopalan (MatSE), X.Q. Pan (Michigan MatSE), K.M. Rabe (Rutgers PHYS, ASTRO), R. Ramesh (Berkeley MatSE, PHYS), P.E. Schiffer (PHYS), N.A. Spaldin (UCSB Mat), and X.X. Xi (PHYS, MatSE)

2005 Seed Projects

• "Bottom-up Assembly of Ordered Metamaterials," David Allara (CHEM), John Badding (CHEM), Gerald Mahan (PHYS) and Ayusman Sen (CHEM)
• "Nanoscale Multiferroics and Magnetoelectric Heterostructures," Venkatraman Gopalan (MatSE), Darrell Schlom (MatSE), Long-Chen (MatSE), Xiaoxing Xi (PHYS, MatSE), Qing Wang (MatSE), Peter Schiffer (PHYS), John Badding (CHEM) and Doug Werner (EE)

2004 Seed Projects

• "Controlled Junction Formation at Nanostructure Interfaces," Jian Xu (ESM) and Shengyong Xu (PHYS)
• "Inorganic Etch Resists," Tom Mallouk (CHEM, PHYS), David Allara (CHEM), and Paul Weiss (CHEM, PHYS)
• "Nanostructured Composite Materials for PEM Fuel Cells," Serguei Lvov (EGEE), Sridhar Komarneni (Ag. Sci.), Mike Chung (MatSE), Jorge Sofo (PHYS, MatSE), Yaw Yeboah (EGEE), Jim Adair (MatSE), and Carlo Pantano (MatSE)
• "Directional surface locomotion of hydrogel microspheres," Christine Keating (CHEM) and Tom Jackson (EE)
• "Photoresist Materials for Surface Imaging Nanolithography," Ronald Hedden (MatSE) and Mark Horn (ESM)

2003 Seed Projects

• "Hybrid Metal-Semiconductor-Dielectric Holey Fiber Nono-Phontonics," John Badding (CHEM) and Venkat Gopalan (MatSE)
• "Protein Simulations in Confined Environments," Melik Demirel (ESM)
• "Catalytic Nanomotors," Ayusman Sen (CHEM), Tom Mallouk (CHEM, PHYS), and Vin Crespi (PHYS, MatSE)
• "Fluorescence-Polarization Correlation Spectroscopy for Single-Molecule Studies," Ahmed Heikal (BioE)
• "Nanowire Sculptured Thin Films for Photonic and Sensing Applications," Mark Horn (ESM) and Akhlesh Lakhtakia (ESM)
• "Spin Dependent Transport n Si Nanowires," Qi Li (PHYS), Theresa Mayer (EE), and Joan Redwing (MatSE)

2002 Seed Projects

• "E-Beam Lithography for Synthesis and Characterization of Metal and Semiconducting Nanowires," Theresa Mayer (EE), Joan Redwing (ESM), Suzanne Mohney (ESM) and Ari Mizel (PHYS)
• "Modeling the Dynamic Response of Nanowires Structures for Integrated Nano-Mechanical Biosensor Arrays," Gary Gray (ESM) and Francesco Costanzo (ESM)
• "TiO2 Nanotube Hydrogen Sensors," Craig Grimes (EE)
• "Catalytic Polymerization inside Nano-Channels: Towards Simultaneous Attainment of Synthesis and Assembly of Nanomaterials," Seong Kim (ChE)
• "Semiconducting Organic-Inorganic Hybrid Nanostructures for Optoelectronics," Qing Wang (MatSE)
• "Implementation of a Wet-Cell Collection-Mode nearField Optical Microscope for Imaging the Actin and Myosin Molecular Interaction," Joseph Stitt (Res. Assoc., ARL), Venkat Gopalan (MatSE), Lars Larsson (PHSIO), and Richard Tutwiler (Res. Assoc., ARL)
• "Novel Fabrication Techniques for Free-Standing Nanomechanical Structures," Srinivas Tadigadapa (EE) and Moses Chan (PHYS)
• "Novel Ionic Composites for Removal of Biological and Chemical Agents," Ayusman Sen (CHEM)
• "Nanostructure of Magnetic Oxide," Qi Li (PHYS)
• "Patterning Signaling Complexes in Live Cells and Model Membranes," Erin Sheets (CHEM)
• "A Study on the Fabrication, Structural Characterization and Magnetic and Transport Properties of Superconductivity And Magnetic Nanowires," Jinguo Wang (Res. Assoc., MRI) and Mingliang Tian (Res. Assoc., CNS)
• "Interfaces in Heterostructured Nanowires And Micro-Disks: Atomic Scale Structures, Chemistry and Electronic Structure," Elizabeth Dickey (MatSE)

2002 Seed Projects

• "Novel Piezoelectric Strain-Tunable Photonic Crystals," Venkat Gopalan (MatSE) and Qiming Zhang (EE)
• "Superconductivity and Quantum Phase Transition in 1 Dimensional, Superconducting Au/Ge Wires," Ying Liu (PHYS)
• "Effect of Confinement on Polymer Fragility and Cooperative Glassy Dynamics," Evangelos Manias (MatSE) and Ralph Colby (MatSE)
• "Template-Based Fabrication of Metal-Semiconductor-Metal Nanowires," Joan Redwing (MatSE) and Suzanne Mohney (MatSE)
• "Spins in Confined Geometries," Peter Schiffer (PHYS) and Nitin Samarth (PHYS)