Materials Science & Engineering Research

Soft and hybrid materials

Polymers and hybrid materials are the key building blocks for designing advanced materials for renewable energy (e.g., batteries, CO₂ capture and use, desalination), advanced composites, wearable electronics, regenerative medicine, sustainable plastics, and additive manufacturing that are rapidly transforming our society.  We are at the cutting edge of developing, understanding and applying self-assembling polymers for creating ultra-small features for microelectronics, resins for additive manufacturing, implantable dissolvable sensors, biomaterials for tissue engineering and cell biomanufacturing, polymers for drug delivery, advanced processing methods for polymers, organic materials for redox flow batteries, metalorganic (semi) conductors, and ion exchange membrane design for electrochemical cells.

Faculty

Core faculty

• Mike Arnold
• Dawei Feng
• Padma Gopalan
• Xudong Wang

Affiliated Faculty

• AJ Boydston
• Weibo Cai
• Wendy Crone
• David Lynn
• Kristyn Masters
• William Murphy
• Tim Osswald
• Lih-Shen Turng
• Justin Williams

Centers, Consortia and Institutes

• Wisconsin Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC)
• Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center on Templated Synthesis and Assembly at the Nanoscale
• Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery
• Energy Institute
• Polymer Engineering Center
• Wisconsin Centers for Nanoscale Technology
• University of Wisconsin Nuclear Reactor
• Center for High-throughput Computing
• Wisconsin Applied Computing Center
• Water Science and Engineering Laboratory
• Wisconsin Quantum Institute

Research Centers, Facilities and Initiatives

UW-Madison has some of the world’s most extensive and advanced resources to support materials research. To promote interaction among faculty and students with materials interests, the engineering campus hosts many laboratories for research areas such as electron microscopy, crystallography, electronic materials, fatigue and fracture, nuclear materials, polymer science, powder metallurgy, radiation damage, rheology, crystal growth and purification, superconductivity, cryogenics, and surface properties.

Facilities and expertise required to design and fabricate special research equipment is available on the engineering campus. In addition to materials research laboratories in engineering and physical science departments, the Wisconsin Centers for Nanoscale Technology offers state-of-the-art general-purpose laboratories, materials preparation facilities, and commonly used apparatus, such as electron microscopes and x-ray diffractometers.

Campus-wide facilities include computing centers, heavy ion and electron accelerators, and a nuclear reactor with facilities for neutron diffraction. Students and faculty also use the Physical Sciences Laboratory.

Check out what’s happening in the Advanced Materials Industrial Consortium, which gives our commercial partners the opportunity to collaborate with students and faculty in advanced materials research across the UW-Madison campus.