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	Congratulationsto the Recipient of the 2015 Journal of Materials Research Paper of the Year Award! Chong-Min Wang, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory In situ transmission electron microscopy and spectroscopy studies of rechargeable batteries under dynamic operating conditions: A retrospective and perspective view FREE ACCESS to this article is available in perpetuity at journals.cambridge.org/2015JMR.
	Free Webinar—MRS David Turnbull Lecture Soft Matter Across the Millennium–From Reptation to Osteoarthritis Thursday, April 21  |  12:00 – 1:30 pm (ET) This webinar is offered as a free benefit to MRS University Chapter members. If you are not currently a member of an MRS University Chapter, or if your university does not currently have a chapter, we invite you to attend as a guest of the University Chapter program.
	CALL FOR PAPERS—2016 MRS Fall Meeting & Exhibit 2016 MRS Fall Meeting & Exhibit November 27-December 2, 2016  |  Boston, Massachusetts Abstract Submission Opens—May 16, 2016 Abstract Submission Deadline—June 16, 2016

MATERIALS NEWS

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Materials in Focus

Glancing angle vapor deposition creates complex structures
	Nanophotonics pushes the limits of several fields, from solar cell technology to data processing. In order to tap into light’s full potential at the nanoscale, researchers need to be able to create more diverse and complex structures. A team of researchers at Purdue University has developed an angled vapor-deposition system that allows for more controlled deposition, for the creation of complex and novel quasi-three-dimensional (3D) structures, as reported in a recent issue of MRS Communications.
Bio Focus: Hybrid semiconductor-bacterium self-photosensitization improves artificial photosynthesis
	Researchers from the University of California–Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have developed a hybrid system for artificial photosynthesis by combining nanoparticles of an inorganic semiconductor with self-photosensitizing bacteria to produce acetic acid using only solar energy. Kelsey K. Sakimoto, Andrew Barnabas Wong, and Peidong Yang combined nanoparticles of the semiconductor cadmium sulfide (CdS), which is an excellent harvester of light, with a self-photosensitizing bacteria Moorella thermoacetica.
Printed electrodes could solve issues with wearable keyboard size
	Information is now accessible at the touch of a button—literally at our fingertips. Be it a smartphone, a tablet, a smartwatch, or a smart glass, compact portable electronic devices play a major role in this revolution. The future of such facile information access lies in devices that integrate with the human body and work in tandem with human physiology. For this reason, several wearable electronic devices have been developed that cover a huge spectrum of design options.
3D-printed architectures impart additional control over reactive materials
	Reactive materials (RMs) are a class of composite materials that, when ignited, produce a sudden release of energy in the form of heat and pressure. This makes them ideal for use in applications that rely on a quick, precise burst of energy such as ejector seats and airbags. Now researchers have made use of modern-day three-dimensional (3D) printing techniques to create unique 3D RM architectures that offer an added degree of tunability in energy transport.
Bio Focus: Light-activated quantum dots kill antibiotic resistant superbugs
	With the growth and spread of “superbugs,” bacteria resistant to multiple drugs, the world is quickly approaching a post-antibiotic era defined by incurable bacterial infections. To try to avoid this fate, researchers have devised alternative means to kill these hardy bacteria, such as using different types of nanoparticles, with varying degrees of success.
Directional freeze-casting method produces highly structured metal foams by ice-templating
	Materials engineered into anisotropic foams, characterized by their directionally-dependent pores, offer stronger, stiffer, and lighter-weight structures than their bulk counterparts. This is valuable in electronic, catalytic, filtering, and load-bearing applications. However, creating an anisotropic foam from a metal poses challenges.
Novel passivation technique enhances performance of high-efficiency silicon solar cells
	Silicon is the material of choice for most solar cells in the photovoltaic industry today and for the foreseeable future. Scientists are working to get silicon cells to be as inexpensive as possible with higher efficiencies. A team of researchers at NREL recently developed a novel passivation technique based on polycrystalline silicon passivated contacts as part of a process that can lead to next-generation high-efficiency silicon solar cells.

People in Focus

John W. Cahn dies at 88
	John W. Cahn—a foremost thinker in materials science, focusing on the understanding and improvement of metals and other substances that form the physical foundations of everyday life — died March 14, 2016 at a retirement community in Seattle. He was 88.
The nuclear physicist who helped reduce the world stockpile of nuclear arms retires
	James Timbie played a behind-the-scenes role advising negotiators on the science behind nuclear weapons in every arms-control agreement since the Nixon administration. Wendy Sherman, the former undersecretary of state for political affairs, credited Timbie with suggesting creative solutions to problem areas. She said he was the one who suggested modifying the Arak heavy-water reactor so it could not produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Industry Focus

Why energy storage may be the most important technology in the world right now
Just as electric light became competitive with gas light more than a century ago, renewable energy and electric cars are becoming competitive with technologies based on fossil fuels. However, for the new technologies to become truly transformative, we need to develop a new generation of batteries to power them.

US textile industry turns to tech as gateway to revival
Warwick Mills is joining the Defense Department, universities including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and nearly 50 other companies in an ambitious $320 million project to push the US textile industry into the digital age. Key to the plan is a technical ingredient: embedding a variety of tiny semiconductors and sensors into fabrics that can see, hear, communicate, store energy, warm or cool a person or monitor the wearer's health.

Policy Focus

USAID’s PEER Program fosters economic development through basic science
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which has been providing aid to non-US countries in order to promote social and economic development since 1961, is an agency that materials researchers have likely never needed to look up. But through a recently established entity called the Global Development Lab, the agency now funds basic materials research that could impact many lives in developing nations.

Laureates call for cut to highly enriched uranium
A group of 35 Nobel laureates, including 16 physicists, has called on world leaders to reduce the use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) in naval nuclear propulsion and research reactors.

Europe on course for a neutron drought
Scientists in Europe face a dramatic reduction in neutrons beams for research within the next 5 to 10 years, even though the world's most intense neutron source is expected to turn on in Sweden by the end of the decade. 

For more science policy news, follow @MaterialsSciPol

OF INTEREST TO THE MATERIALS COMMUNITY

Pushing the frontiers of lithium-ion batteries raises safety questions
At Underwriters Laboratories, where researchers develop standards and testing procedures for batteries, J. Thomas Chapin, vice president of research, sees a surge in the production of lithium-ion batteries. Billions of lithium-ion cells are being manufactured monthly, a figure that will more than double with massive new facilities under construction or planned in the United States and Korea. “If failures occur in the wrong place, the consequences can be serious,” Chapin said, some as severe as the January 2013 incidents on Boeing 787 Dreamliners that grounded the entire 787 fleet until a fix was in hand.

Power-to-gas plants use renewable energy to make sustainable fuel
Renewable energy provides electricity with significantly less greenhouse gas emissions than fossil-fuel-based power plants. But some sources of renewable energy, such as wind and solar power, produce electricity intermittently. Power produced when electricity demand is low could go unused.

World's most powerful x-ray laser gets upgrade
The fastest and most powerful X-ray laser in the world will soon be an astonishing 8,000 times faster and 10,000 times brighter, enabling scientists to see how nature works on the atomic level and on ultrafast timescales.

Edible film: The future of eco-friendly packaging?
Food packaging is a major source of plastic waste. Developing wrapping that is edible could help - not just the environment, but maybe even taste, too. 


MEETINGS UPDATE

Critical Meeting Deadlines

PUBLICATIONS UPDATE

Awards

MRS Communications Lecture with David Martin

David C. Martin of the University of Delaware delivered the inaugural MRS Communications Lecture at the 2016 MRS Spring Meeting in Phoenix. This award recognizes excellence in the field of materials research through work published in MRS Communications. Watch Martin’s interview on MRS-TV and read the article on Cambridge Journals Online, free through April 30, 2016. For a brief summary of the research, see Editor’s Choice Video.

Critical Publications Deadlines

JUST PUBLISHED

Electro-mechanical performance of thin gold films on polyimide Barbara Putz, Oleksandr Glushko, Vera M. Marx, Christoph Kirchlechner, Daniel Toebbens, and Megan J. Cordill Development of the Nitride Laser Diode Arrays for Video and Movie Projectors Piotr Perlin, Szymon Stańczyk, Steve Najda, Tadek Suski, Przemek Wiśniewski, Irina Makarowa, Łucja Marona, Anna Kafar, Agata Bojarska, Robert Czernecki, Robert Sarzała, Maciej Kuc, and Mike Leszczynski Operations, Charge Transport, and Random Telegraph Noise in HfOx Resistive Random Access Memory: a Multi-scale Modeling Study Francesco M. Puglisi, Luca Larcher, Andrea Padovani, and Paolo Pavan

March 2016, Volume 6, Issue 1 Hierarchical nanostructures of BiOBr/AgBr on electrospun carbon nanofibers with enhanced photocatalytic activity Qin Huang, Guohua Jiang, Hua Chen, Lei Li, Yongkun Liu, Zaizai Tong, and Wenxing Chen Recent Papers Available on FirstView Local-structure-affected behavior during self-driven grain boundary migration X. M. Luo, B. Zhang, X. F. Zhu, Y. T. Zhou, T. Y. Xiao,and G. P. Zhang An integral equation based domain decomposition method for solving large-size substrate-supported aperiodic plasmonic array platforms Shifei Tao, Jierong Cheng, and Hossein Mosallaei

Get your free Android App or iOS App for MRS Communications for full mobile access to this journal.

Select theme articles Twinning effects on strength and plasticity of metallic materials Jian Wang and Xinghang Zhang, Guest Editors Synthesis and microstructure of electrodeposited and sputtered nanotwinned face-centered-cubic metals Daniel C. Bufford, Y. Morris Wang, Yue Liu, and Lei Lu Strengthening and plasticity in nanotwinned metals F. Sansoz, K. Lu, T. Zhu, and A. Misra Fracture, fatigue, and creep of nanotwinned metals Xiaoyan Li, Ming Dao, Christoph Eberl, Andrea Maria Hodge, and Huajian Gao

Advertise in MRS Bulletin.

A selection of papers: Transport properties of VSe2 monolayers separated by bilayers of BiSe Omar K. Hite, Michael Nellist, Jeffery Ditto, Matthias Falmbigl and David C. Johnson Controllable growth of layered selenide and telluride heterostructures and superlattices using molecular beam epitaxy Suresh Vishwanath, Xinyu Liu, Sergei Rouvimov, Leonardo Basile, Ning Lu, Angelica Azcatl, Katrina Magno, Robert M. Wallace, Moon Kim, Juan-Carlos Idrobo, Jacek K. Furdyna, Debdeep Jena and Huili Grace Xing Persistent photoconductivity in two-dimensional Mo1−x W x Se2–MoSe2 van der Waals heterojunctions Xufan Li, Ming-Wei Lin, Alexander A. Puretzky, Leonardo Basile, Kai Wang, Juan C. Idrobo, Christopher M. Rouleau, David B. Geohegan and Kai Xiao

From Volume 1804, 2015 MRS Spring Meeting, Symposium RR - Solution Syntheses of Inorganic Functional/Multifunctional Materials TiO2 Macroscopic Fibers Bearing Outstanding Photocatalytic Properties Obtained through an Integrative Chemistry-Based Scale-Up Semi-Industrial Process Natacha Kinadjian, Mickael le Bechec, Wilfrid Neri, Philippe Poulin, Sylvie Lacombe and Rénal Backov Study of Bactericidal Properties of Mg-Doped ZnO Nanoparticles Melina Perez-Altamar, Hilary Marrero, Milton Martínez Julca and Oscar Perales Perez From Volume 1808, 2015 MRS Spring Meeting, Symposium WW - Ultrafast Dynamics in Complex Functional Materials  Laser Terahertz Emission Spectroscopy of Graphene/InAs Junctions Filchito Renee Bagsican, Jofferson Gonzales, Xiang Zhang, Lulu Ma, Iwao Kawayama, Hironaru Murakami, Robert Vajtai, Pulickel Ajayan, Junichiro Kono and Masayoshi Tonouchi

SCIENCE AS ART

Nano Aquarium Chenxi Qian, University of Toronto This is an SEM image [5.0 kV] of nanostructured titania particles with various morphology. A Second Place Winner in the Science as Art competition at the 2015 MRS Fall Meeting. Copyright for all Science as Art images belongs to the Materials Research Society. To request permission to re-use the images, please contact Anita Miller.

EDITOR'S CHOICE VIDEO

NEW PRODUCTS FOCUS

New As/P Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition System
	Veeco Instruments Inc. recently announced the launch of the new TurboDisc® K475i™ Arsenic Phosphide (As/P) Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) System for the production of red, orange, yellow (R/O/Y) light emitting diodes (LEDs), as well as multi-junction III-V solar cells, laser diodes and transistors. Incorporating proprietary TurboDisc and Uniform FlowFlange™ MOCVD technologies, the new K475i system enables Veeco customers to reduce LED cost per wafer by up to 20 percent compared to alternative systems through higher productivity, best-in-class yields and reduced operating expenses. This patented Uniform FlowFlange technology provides ease-of-tuning for fast process optimization and fast tool recovery time after maintenance enabling the highest productivity for applications such as lighting, display, solar, laser diodes, pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistors (pHEMTs) and heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs). Contact: [email protected] or 516-677-0200
New Heat and Cooling Thermal Mixer
	Boekel Scientific recently introduced their new Heat and Cooling Thermal Mixer. The Heat Cool Thermal Mixer II has a large intuitive touch screen, interchangeable auto-recognized blocks to fit most laboratory consumables, multiple modes for increased process performance and a large and accurate temperature and mixing range. The Heat Cool Thermal Mixer II has up to five programmable timed steps to create unique temperature and mixing profiles that can be saved and named for reuse at a later time. The parameters can be quickly changed to use the unit on the fly for warming, cooling, or mixing samples. Typical laboratory uses include: extraction, expression, labeling, purification and analysis of proteins, DNA, Plasmids, RNA, from gels, magnetic beads, tissue, or biological samples. Contact: [email protected] or 215-396-8200

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