Alexander Balandin, a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Riverside and Ludwig Bartels, a professor of chemistry, have received a $1.12 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to conduct data-driven discovery, synthesis, and characterization of a unique new class of materials, referred to as one-dimensional van der Waals bonded solids. Balandin serves as a UCR Principal Investigator for this interdisciplinary project. The overall machine-learning and data-driven discovery project is led by Evan Reed, an associate professor of materials science at Stanford University, who has a separate budget from NSF for this research. The Stanford group provides computational data and insights for the experimental activities conducted at UC Riverside.
Two-dimensional van der Waals materials such as graphene exhibit numerous exotic properties, such as the extremely high thermal conductivity of graphene, discovered at UC Riverside. Unlike two- dimensional layered materials, the one-dimensional layered materials have received relatively little research attention, until today. However, they are likely to exhibit many of the useful properties of their two-dimensional counterparts and offer even more variety in electrical and thermal characteristics. The new NSF project will explore a recently discovered class of more than 400 materials that form one- dimensional van der Waals wires of bonded atoms surrounded by gaps, avoiding any unsaturated atoms at the wire perimeter. The nanofabrication required for investigation of bundles of one-dimensional van der Waals solids will be conducted in the UCR Nanofabrication Facility.
- Link to UCR press release
Photo: Ludwig Bartels (left) and Alexander Balandin (right) in the Phonon Optimized Engineered Materials (POEM) Center at UC Riverside, 2019