Four researchers from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at West Virginia University, in conjunction with the federal Materials Genomics Initiative, are finding ways to more quickly design materials that will find their ways to the marketplace.

Just as the Human Genome Initiative in the 1990s sequenced human DNA for the subsequent identification and analysis of genes, so too will the Materials Genome Initiative sequence materials for identifying new properties for a variety of applications.

Aldo Romero, Cheng Cen, David Lederman and James P. Lewis have received support for nearly $2 million to rapidly develop new materials under the initiative.

Some of the projects the researchers are pursuing:

• The rapid discovery of fluoride-based multiferroic materials, which could allow for generating electric fields that would support more efficient electronic devices or be electronic responsive under a magnetic field. The research is supported by a $1.2 million National Science Foundation award.

• The computational design of nano-catalysts from gold and silver alloys for use in energy and environmental science applications, such as in automobile exhaust cleanup. This research is supported by a roughly $560,000 National Science Foundation award.

“The Materials Genome Initiative paradigm will revolutionize the way we pursue new technologies with more efficient research teams that focus more on the application-driven properties of materials. But, the problems are extremely complex — in the human genome there are only the four DNA bases; a material’s genomics can consist of anything in the periodic table,” Lewis said.

Lewis is working on the nano-catalyst research with Rongchao Jin, a synthetic chemist at Carnegie Mellon University who received a separate award. Lewis will computationally design the nano-catalysts from gold and silver alloys and Jin will synthesize these nano-catalysts based on Lewis’ discoveries.

Both Romero and Lewis have also received other awards related to materials genomics. Romero was recently awarded a Petroleum Research Fund grant from the American Chemical Society to design base lithium lightweight materials. And Lewis, was awarded a grant from the Department of Energy to develop new sorbent materials, or “nano-sponges” that utilize light to open and close nano-sized pores.

In 2013, Lewis was awarded a Fulbright that he used to travel to the Czech Republic explore ways to more quickly design materials for solar applications. The process to develop and test these devices can generally take more than 10 years, but Lewis’ aim remains to cut that time in half.

For more information about the WVU Department of Physics and Astronomy’s materials research and involvement in the Materials Genomics Initiative, contact James P. Lewis at james.lewis@mail.wvu.edu or Aldo Romero at Aldo.Romero@mail.wvu.edu.

-WVU-

ma/3/18/15

CONTACT: Devon Copeland, Director of Marketing and Communication, Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, West Virginia University, 304-293-6867, Devon.Copeland@mail.wvu.edu

Follow @WVUToday on Twitter.