Materials Processing

Materials processing transforms raw materials into useful forms, such as coatings, films, fibers and complex shapes, with well-defined structure and properties. It plays a central role in the large-scale manufacturing of a wide variety of products for electrical, mechanical, thermal, biomedical and optical applications. Materials processing is inherently interdisciplinary and forms a natural bridge between basic and applied science and engineering. In some cases, research in CEMS develops and applies processing science to enable the production of new materials and microstructures predicted to have unique or improved properties. In other cases, processing-related research focuses on understanding the fundamental phenomena to enable industrial scale-up of manufacturing processes with improved efficiency and product quality. 

Relevant Collaborative Partners and Core Facilities

Processing-related research in CEMS benefits from close collaborations with industrial partners, such as those supported in the Coating Process Fundamentals, Microstructured Polymers, and Optoelectronics and Metamaterials research groups within the Industrial Partnership for Research in Interfacial and Materials Engineering (IPRIME) and through research supported by the NSF-funded Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC). This research also makes use of shared facilities for processing and characterization including the UMN Characterization Facility (CharFac), the Polymer Characterization and Processing Facility, and cleanroom and microelectronics processing capability in the Minnesota Nano Center (MNC).

Selected Publications

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Process Engineered Spontaneous Orientation Polarization in Organic Light-Emitting Devices

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Polar molecules with appreciable permanent dipole moments (PDMs) are widely used as the electron transport layer (ETL) in organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs). When the PDMs spontaneously align, a macroscopic polarization field can be observed, a phenomenon known as spontaneous orientation polarization (SOP). The Read More...

Related Faculty: Russell Holmes

Solution-based, additive fabrication of flush metal conductors in plastic substrates by printing and plating in two-level capillary channels

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A strategy to control the structure of electroless copper deposition in confined features was developed for applications in printed electronic devices and interconnects. This work builds on and refines a previous process of additively manufacturing metal conductors using a combined imprint, print, and plate strategy. A two-level Read More...

Related Faculty: Lorraine Francis, Dan Frisbie

Structure-Property Relationships and Mobility Optimization in Sputtered La-doped BaSnO3 Films: Toward 100 cm2V-1s-1 Mobility

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The wide band gap semiconducting perovskite BaSnO3 is of high current interest due to outstanding room temperature mobility at high electron density, fueled by potential applications in oxide, transparent, and power electronics. Due in part to a lack of lattice-matched substrates, BaSnO3 thin films suffer from Read More...

Related Faculty: Bharat Jalan, Chris Leighton, Andre Mkhoyan

Gas Nitriding Behavior of Refractory Metals and Implications for Multi-Principal Element Alloy Design

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Multi-principal element alloys (MPEAs) comprise a large, flexible compositional space that enables tuning of their chemistry, structure, and properties. To facilitate the development of nitriding-based surface-enhancement strategies that harness a broad compositional space, this study examined Read More...

Related Faculty: Nate Mara, David Poerschke

Photocrosslinkable Polymeric Bicontinuous Microemulsions

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We present an approach to photocrosslink bicontinuous microemulsions derived from ternary blends of poly(methoxyethyl acrylate) (PM, Mn = 4200 g/mol), poly(hexyl methacrylate-co-coumarin methacrylate) (PHC, Mn = 6800 g/mol), and PM-b-PHC diblock polymer (Mn = 19,400 g/mol) in a phase-selective manner, enabling structural characterization at an Read More...

Related Faculty: Frank Bates, Tim Lodge

Engineering Metal Oxidation using Epitaxial Strain

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The oxides of platinum group metals are promising for future electronics and spintronics due to the delicate interplay of spin-orbit coupling and electron correlation energies. However, their synthesis as thin films remains challenging due to their low vapour pressures and low oxidation potentials. Here we show Read More...

Related Faculty: Bharat Jalan, Andre Mkhoyan