WELCOME TO ENCOMM

DOE Energy Frontier Research Center

Hybrid and Composite Materials

The Center for Electronic/Magnetic Nanoscale Composite Multifunctional Materials (ENCOMM) is a University funded Initiative that builds on the broad strength at OSU in electronic, magnetic and organic materials to address cutting edge challenges in understanding and developing complex multicomponent materials. These problems are inherently multidisciplinary and require state-of-the-art facilities. ENCOMM's mission is to create the environment in which these teams can form and interact, and to provide the infrastructure needed to perform the research that will define this field.

The growth in our ability to fabricate, manipulate, characterize, understand and model multicomponent solids comprised of dissimilar materials and with complex structures is ushering in a new era for materials with advanced functionality and exceptional levels of performance. Fashioning such hybrid materials with nanometer-scale precision opens a new frontier for conception and implementation of new devices with a vast range of capabilities. Early successes along these lines include mixing metals and magnets to form "spintronics" read heads that enabled a million-fold increase in information storage capacity of computer hard drives, complex materials architectures to form photovoltaic devices that capture sunlight, transistors made of nanometer scale "nanowires" or single molecules for ultradense information storage, remarkable sensitivity to magnetic fields and coupling of electric to magnetic responses in complex transition metal oxides, to electronics and photonics made from large area inexpensive plastic sheets. Control at the nano scale (a few atoms or molecules thick) of the arrangement of atoms and molecules both in the plane of the interface between dissimilar material and perpendicular to it enables the essential transfer of electrons, spins and photons (the quanta for electronics, magnetism and light, respectively). The exquisite degree of control now achievable using sophisticated physical and chemical growth processes, is opening new avenues to engineer transport properties at interfaces and to manipulate interactions between device components to achieve new functionality for information processing, energy generation from sunlight, light generation from electricity, light weight high density information storage, sophisticated sensors for homeland security, and entirely new classical and quantum approaches to computing and communication.

—Chris Hammel
Director, Center for Electronic & Magnetic Nanoscale Composite Multifunctional Materials (an OSU Initiative)
Ohio Eminent Scholar