Category Archives: News

October, 2018: KIC Members Jin Suntivich & Darrell Schlom change electrochemical properties by “shuffling” the top layer of a well-known catalyst. The ability to tailor the catalyst at the atomic scale could open up a whole new way of thinking about catalyst design, Suntivich says. Read more in the Cornell Chronicle.

August, 2018: Lena Kourkoutis, KIC member and Assistant Professor of Applied and Engineering Physics, has developed and demonstrated a technique for direct visualization of solid-liquid interfaces in an effort to better understand a major problem with Li-metal batteries: dendrite growth on the anode, which can cause short-circuiting and, in extreme cases, catastrophic battery failure. Read more […]

July, 2018: Guinness World Records has officially recognized KIC members David Muller and Sol Gruner for their world record for highest electron microscope resolution. Read more in the Cornell Chronicle  and The Guinness World Records site.

July, 2018: KIC member Hector Abruna to lead the recently funded DOE Center for Alkaline-Based Energy Solutions (CABES), part of the Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC). CABES, dedicated to the development of advanced fuel cell technologies in alkaline media, has been awarded a four-year, $10.75M grant from the DOE office of Science.  Read more in […]

July, 2018: KIC co-Director David Muller, KIC member Sol Gruner and Physics Professor Veit Elser, have developed a method for achieving ultra-high resolution for their electron microscope, using monolayer molybdenum disulfide to achieve a world record for image resolution. The Cornell-developed electron microscope pixel array detector employed in this method was developed with support from […]

May 2018: KIC members Jie Shan and Kin Fai Mak are experts on atomically thin materials, particularly their optical and electronic properties. They are also married and were recruited to Cornell last year through the provost’s NEXT Nano Initiative. They moved their shared lab and joint research group to Ithaca and have been up and […]

May, 2018:  KIC congratulates Executive Committee member Hector Abruna on being elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Abruna is one of 84 new members and 21 foreign associates elected to NAS in recognition of his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.  This story originally appeared in the Cornell Chronicle.  

April, 2018: KIC members Jie Shan and Kin Fai Mak have become the first to control atomically thin magnets with an electric field, a breakthrough that provides a blueprint for producing exceptionally powerful and efficient data storage in computer chips, among other applications. The research is detailed in the paper, “Electric-field switching of two-dimensional van der […]

March, 2018: In a study published March 8 in Science, KIC co-Director David Muller, in collaboration with University of Chicago scientists, revealed a technique to “sew” two patches of crystals seamlessly together to create atomically thin fabrics.  Read more in the Cornell Chronicle.

March 2018: KIC members Grace Xing, Debdeep Jena and David Muller are among a team of Cornell researchers that have successfully devised a semi-conductor-superconductor crystal featuring gallium nitride (GaN) grown directly only a crystal of niobium nitride (NbN), a proven superconductor material used in many applications, including quantum communications and astronomy.  Their research was published online […]

January, 2018: A KIC research team comprised of co-Directors Paul McEuen & David Muller,  member Itai Cohen, and Postdoctoral Fellow Marc Miskin have built the ‘muscle’ for an electricity-conducting, environment-sensing, shape-changing machine the size of a human cell. Their work is outlined in “Graphene-based Bimorphs for Micron-sized, Autonomous Origami Machines,” published Jan. 2 in Proceedings of the […]

December, 2017: KIC co-Director David Muller and his research collaborators have discovered a method for basically inserting a 1-D semiconductor channel into the “fabric” of a 2-D materials. The electronic band structures of these channels exhibit the proprieties necessary for future electronics applications.  This research was published in Nature Materials.  Read more in the Cornell […]

Nov. 2017: KIC members Darrell Schlom and Kyle Shen address a decades-old mystery of “missing electrons.” Their work is detailed in a paper, “Lifshitz transition from valence fluctuations in YbAl3,” published Oct. 11 in Nature Communications. Read more in the Cornell Chronicle.

Nov. 2017: KIC members and postdocs explore the optical properties of single-atom-thick layers of graphene and report clear observations of exitons in bilayer graphene.  The research by Paul McEuen, Farhan Rana, Long Ju and Lei Wang (all affiliated with KIC) was published in Science on Nov 17, 2017.  Read more in the Cornell Chronicle.

Oct. 2017:  Inspired by cephalopods such as the optopus that have the ability to quickly change color and shape, KIC member and Professor of Physics Itai Cohen has teamed up with Rob Shepherd, an assistant professor in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, to devise a method for precisely transforming stretchable 2D obejcts […]