Cambridge, Mass. – September 20, 2013 – The National Science Foundation (NSF) has selected Harvard University to lead a new Science and Technology Center, the Center for Integrated Quantum Materials. The multi-institutional grant based at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) will provide up to $20 million over five years to fund science and education programs that explore the unique electronic behavior of quantum materials, including graphene, topological insulators, and nitrogen vacancy (NV) center diamond, with the goal of discovering new approaches to signal processing, computing, and terahertz electronics.

The new Center for Integrated Quantum Materials is funded as part of the NSF’s Science and Technology Center (STC) program, which supports integrative partnerships that require large-scale, long-term funding to produce research and education of the highest quality. Existing STCs study a wide range of complex scientific topics, such as multiscale atmospheric modeling, life beneath the sea floor, energy-efficient electronics, and biophotonics. Harvard’s proposal was one of three selected through a merit-based competition.

Drawing on expertise in materials synthesis, nanofabrication, characterization, and device physics, Harvard’s new initiative will be a center for collaboration across diverse disciplines and institutions. Harvard will partner with Howard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the Museum of Science, Boston. The Center will also encourage young students to pursue careers in science and engineering through an affiliated College Network including Bunker Hill Community College, Gallaudet University, Mount Holyoke College, Olin College, Prince George's Community College, and Wellesley College.

“As we move into a post-silicon age, quantum materials are an emerging technology with enormous promise for science and engineering, and for our country’s overall economy in the form of new products and business opportunities,” says Robert M. Westervelt, Mallinckrodt Professor of Applied Physics and Physics at Harvard, who will lead the center. “The scientists collaborating on this project have a vision of future quantum materials and quantum devices -- new devices and systems that were not conceived to be possible 10 years ago. This line of research promises an impressive trajectory over the coming decades.”

The Center for Integrated Quantum Materials will integrate three areas of research. The first will involve synthesizing new materials based on graphene, the one-atom-thick carbon material that has proven to be extremely well suited for carrying electrons coherently and rapidly. The researchers hope to use these materials to fabricate new types of ultra-high-speed, atomic-scale devices, including stacked atomic layers that use hexagonal boron nitride as an insulator between sheets of graphene.

The second area of research will explore a class of materials called topological insulators—materials that conduct only at their surface. Topological insulators preserve the direction of an electron spin as it travels along the surface, allowing a spin to carry bits of information in a future quantum network.

The third area of research involves the use of a single atom to store a bit of information. A nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center is created in diamond when a nitrogen atom replaces a carbon in the crystal structure.  The electron spin on an NV center can store a bit of information for over 1 millisecond at room temperature, written and read out using light.

The Center aims to integrate NV center diamond storage sites with atomic-layer devices and topological insulator data channels to create transformative new devices and systems for storing, manipulating, and transmitting information.

“Research in integrated quantum materials crosses traditional disciplines and is precisely the type of science that a consortium like this can excel at,” says Cherry A. Murray, Dean of Harvard SEAS, John A. and Elizabeth S. Armstrong Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Professor of Physics. “Like other nascent technologies that have benefitted from government support in the past, the work of the Center for Integrated Quantum Materials has the potential to be industry-shaping in ways we cannot predict.”

An important part of the Center's mission will be to engage the public in the discovery of atomic electronics and to draw young students to careers in science and engineering. 

The Museum of Science, Boston, which also leads the NSF Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network of education and research organizations, will play a core role.

  A “College Network” will draw talented undergraduates into the labs, including women from Mount Holyoke and Wellesley, deaf and hard of hearing students from Gallaudet, students with a technical focus from Olin, and a diverse group of students from Bunker Hill and Prince's George's Community Colleges.

Additionally, a special initiative at Bunker Hill will recruit military veterans into the research programs and activities of the Center. Together, these programs will attract students from diverse backgrounds to science and engineering and provide them with unique opportunities for scholarship and leadership.

The National Science Foundation also announced this month that a second Science and Technology Center—the Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines—will be based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-led by Harvard faculty member L. Mahadevan.

Mahadevan is the Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics at Harvard SEAS, professor of organismic and evolutionary biology, and professor of physics.

“The selection of Harvard as a leader of these new multi-institutional Centers will leverage the University’s broad expertise in emerging, vitally important new fields,” says Richard McCullough, Vice Provost for Research at Harvard University and Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at SEAS. “In addition to advancing the state of science, the Science and Technology Centers will serve an equally important purpose: to encourage a broad cross-section of students at various types of institutions to explore careers in science, engineering and technology.”