External Grants

The Ohio State University Institute for Materials Research (IMR) announces its first IMR Industry Challenge Grant awarded to Dr. Dennis Bong, Assistant Professor of Chemistry. 

Dr. Bong will receive $20,000 in cost share from IMR to supplement his project Synthesis of amphiphilic core-shell latex emulsions from soy proteins and delivery of corrosion inhibitors and biocides for coatings application, an externally sponsored research project funded by an industry partner. 

The IMR Industry Challenge Grants program was created to help strengthen new collaborations in materials-allied research between OSU researchers and private industry partners, which will lead to major external proposal development. These grants provide one-to-one matching funds up to $20,000 per year to fund graduate students or postdoctoral researchers working on these collaborative research projects.

 Industry Challenge Grants have a rolling deadline – applications are accepted at any time.  Visit the IMR website for more information and the full Request for Proposals.

A team of OSU researchers has won an NSF Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) award for the acquisition of a hybrid diamond/nitride synthesis cluster tool for studies of wide bandgap semiconductors.

The team of researchers spans two colleges and three departments including Physics (Prof. Ezekiel Johnston-Halperin, CME, PI on the proposal*; Prof. Fengyuan Yang, CME; Prof. Harris Kagan, HEPX), Electrical and Computer Engineering (Prof. Siddharth Rajan**; Prof. Steven A. Ringel) and Materials Science and Engineering (Prof. Roberto Myers**). This cluster tool will allow for in situ sample transfer of substrates between diamond and nitride growth chambers, giving it the unique capability to grow high quality wide-bandgap semiconducting heterostructures. Research activity will span from high-energy physics to prototype electronic, magnetic and photonic devices, covering 15 orders of magnitude in energy (from ~1 meV to ~ 1,000 TeV), 13 orders of magnitude in time (~ 100 fs to ~ 1 ms), and 11 orders of magnitude in length (from ~ 1 nm to ~ 10 cm).

The MRI instrument aqcuisition award will allow an interdisciplinary research team to impact many areas.

As shown in the diagram above, this activity will also support local, national, and international collaborations including the Center for Emergent Materials (CEM, an NSF funded MRSEC at OSU), the RD42 collaboration (located at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland), the State-funded Wright Center for Photovoltaic Innovation and Commercialization (PVIC), and the Center for Affordable Nanoengineering of Polymeric Biomedical Devices (CMPND, an NSF funded NSEC at OSU). The multi-disciplinary project was supported by and developed in conjunction with The Ohio State University Institute for Materials Research (IMR).

* For more information please contact Prof. Johnson-Halperin at ejh@mps.ohio-state.edu.

** Profs. Rajan and Myers have complementary 80/20 appointments between ECE/MSE and MSE/ECE, respectively.

Ohio State’s first NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC), the Center for Emergent Materials (CEM), has been officially awarded effective September 1, 2008!

This award is a major achievement for Ohio State’s materials community since the presence of a MRSEC on campus places OSU in a select group of universities generally acknowledged across the U.S. as the leading institutions in materials research and education.  The process that led to this crowning achievement comes after many years of tireless effort from many of you who are reading this note and is a true testament to our strengths in multi-disciplinary research focused on interdisciplinary issues.

As part of its mission as a university research institute tasked with developing externally-funded and nationally-recognized research centers, IMR is very proud to have helped enable and coordinate this fantastic team of researchers and educators led by the MRSEC Director and Principal Investigator Professor Nitin Padture of the Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering.

Full details of the $17M award ($10.8M from NSF and $6.2M from OSU in cost share).  An information sheet on the MRSEC CEM is available here.

The Ohio Department of Development has announced that The Ohio State University will receive an Ohio Research Scholars Program award totaling over $18 million to fund its proposal, Technology-Enabling and Emergent Materials.

The award funds two endowed Ohio Research Scholars positions for The Ohio State University, a Nanoscale Materials Microscopist and a Molecular Chemist; one Ohio Research Scholar at University of Dayton, a Multi-scale Composites Processing Chair; and one Ohio Research Scholar at University of Akron, a Polymer/Biomolecular Engineer. In addition, the award allows Ohio State to fund internally a third OSU Ohio Research Scholar, a Molecular Biochemist.

These five Ohio Research Scholars will work together in a unique research cluster to pioneer revolutionary approaches to materials development, leveraging the existing materials science strengths of the three partner universities. The OSU Institute for Materials Research was integral to the success of this proposal, having coordinated the proposal development process. IMR will continue to provide leadership with this program through coordination the collaborative projects undertaken by this cluster of Scholars.

On February 4, the Institute for Materials Research submitted a full proposal to the Ohio Department of Development Technology Division in response to its RFP for an Ohio Research Scholars Program (ORSP) in Advanced Materials.

The proposal, “Technology-Enabling and Emergent Materials,” requested a total of $35 million from the state to help fund eight endowed research scholar faculty positions. If this proposal is successful, the university will gain four of those endowed faculty positions in advanced materials in three colleges (Engineering, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences), allowing us to further strengthen our presence in the materials-allied research fields.

The proposal team included Steve Ringel, Jim Lee, Sharell Mikesell, Stephen Myers, Michael Mills, Prabir Dutta, and Layla Manganaro, with contributions from many other OSU faculty, staff, and administrators. The University of Dayton and University of Akron served as collaborating academic institutions, and 49 other collaborators represented industry, research centers, and associations throughout Ohio.

A public meeting will take place downtown on March 5th where state officials will discuss the 23 ORSP proposals. Awards should be announced by late May.

In 2007, IMR coordinated major proposal submissions from OSU to the National Science Foundation ERC, IGERT and MRSEC programs, and last month IMR provided coordination of OSU’s full proposal to the NSF MRSEC program.

On April 17, 2007, Associate Vice President for Research Douglas Kniss announced the internal procedure for proposal submissions to the National Science Foundation Materials Research Science and Education (MRSEC) initiative. Due to the highly competitive nature of the MRSEC competition, a process was created to maximize the expertise and strengths of OSU researchers and faculty. The Institute for Materials Research (IMR) will have an active role in the coordination of OSU’s MRSEC proposal submission. See the attached memo from Dr. Kniss for the detailed approach to be used for this year’s MRSEC proposal submissions.

On December 15, 2006 the Ohio Third Frontier program announced the award for the new Wright Center for Photovoltaics Innovation and Commercialization (PVIC).

This new center will include two major hubs of photovoltaic (solar cell) research, development, and commercialization activities located at the University of Toledo and The Ohio State University. PVIC activities will involve the efforts of over twenty Ohio industrial and not-for-profit partners, including the Battelle Memorial Institute, Bowling Green State University, the Edison Materials Technology Center, and Green Energy Ohio.

Professor Robert Collins of the University of Toledo and Dr. Robert J. Davis of The Ohio State University will be the center Co-Directors. The $18.3 million budget for the center includes approximately $6.8 million for OSU over three years to fund research, development, and commercialization activities in advanced photovoltaic materials, devices, and systems in the College of Engineering and the College of Mathematical and Physical Sciences.

Specific materials systems to be investigated as part of the research portion of the proposal include novel organic-based photovoltaic materials, multi-junction III-V compound semiconductor devices, thermophotovoltaic materials and devices, and quantum dot structures. A major capital acquisition as part of the proposed work is a metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MO-CVD) tool that will be installed at the Nanotech West Laboratory on West Campus, but the proposal also includes other significant capital equipment acquisitions that will benefit the OSU advanced materials community.

For more information about the Wright Center for Photovoltaics Innovation and Commercialization, contact Co-Director Bob Davis at davis.2316@osu.edu.

The IMR is a central part of the Advanced Materials Initiative, one of ten proposals selected for support by OSU’s Targeted Investments in Excellence Program (TIE) in 2006. The TIE supports ten “high-impact initiatives” capable of achieving the university’s academic plan to move Ohio State into the top tier of America’s public research universities. The Advanced Materials Initiative’s objective is to prominently establish OSU as one of the world’s leading universities in materials research and education.

Ohio State’s Academic Plan 2006 Update: The Targeted Investment in Excellence Program

Advanced Materials Initiative Proposal to the TIE Program

“Because of the broad economic and entrepreneurial impact of materials research, and because such research is vital to so many business sectors within Ohio, the work of the Institute can be expected to have a direct impact on the state’s economy… The IMR will foster inter-college cooperation and further engage the contributing faculty in development of an integrated institutional strategy supporting materials research and associated infrastructure.”
- Barbara R. Snyder, OSU Executive Vice President and Provost