Materials Research: Soft, Medium and Hard James S. Brooks, Florida State University, DMR 1005293

1. Materials Research: Soft, Medium and HardJames S. Brooks, Florida State University, DMR 1005293 Our projects span the spectrum of soft to hard materials in the pursuit of how electrical charge, magnetism, and the structure of materials behave and change with external stimuli such as temperature, magnetic field, pressure, and chemical composition. From top to bottom: (Soft1) We discovered that spider silk can be used with adhesive tape to make electrical measurements of quantum effects in graphite layers in tiny micron-sized samples. (Medium2) We found that in exotic molecular structures, each layer of molecules can conduct electricity in a very independent manner, although they “talk to each other” through the intervening insulating layers. (Hard3) Using high magnetic field techniques, we determined the “road map” that electrons follow inside very special inorganic metals, and found that the materials are superconductors because of a “rattle” atom trapped in the center of its crystalline cage. 1RSI 83, 046106(‘12); 2PRL, in press, 8/12; 3PRB 85,180503(R)(‘12)

2. Interdisciplinary Materials Research MentoringJames S. Brooks, Florida State University, DMR 1005293 As a DMR funded research program in experimental materials research, the FSU laboratory is versatile in its ability to host students with diverse research interests from other departments and programs where they can interact with and learn from the more senior graduate students. Here, Eden Steven, the senior graduate student in the group, has been very instrumental in aiding and training (clockwise) Lorena Sanchez (REU) with silk-dielectric-based OFET’s, Rachel Rivers (Maclay High S.) with AFM studies of dielectric film morphologies, Shermane Benjamin (NSF-AGEP) with uniaxial pressure studies of charge density waves in TiSe2, and Paula Sahanggamu (Chem. E.) with high resistance studies of self healing-peptide fibers.