Materials Science Program

Four Rochester researchers from four different fields are 2019 recipients of the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious recognition for junior faculty members.

Rochester researchers are trapping nanoparticle-sized silica beads in an “optical tweezer” in a series of experiments that could shed new light on the fundamental properties of lasers.

New Rochester research may help explain the connection between high blood pressure and Alzheimer's disease, and it's all to do with how the brain pumps away waste.

With a second five years of funding from the National Science Foundation, the Center for Freeform Optics is a collaboration working to develop devices that are lighter, more compact, and more effective than ever before.

A new method of opening solid state materials to oxygenation, using metallic oxide clusters, can eliminate guesswork from discovery of new catalysts. The ultimate goal is to more efficiently convert greenhouse gases to useful fuels.

The concept of nothingness is the subject of everything from children’s books to philosophical debate. In the universe, however, is nothing ever possible? How have scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians thought about the concept of nothing throughout history and up to the present?

Liquid metallic hydrogen is not present naturally on Earth and has only been created in a handful of places, including the University of Rochester's Laboratory for Laser Energetics. LLE scientists are researching the properties of liquid metallic hyrdrogen to understand how planets both inside and outside our solar system form magnetic shields.

A University of Rochester research team has devised a much simpler way to measure beams of light—even powerful, superfast pulsed laser beams that require very complicated devices to characterize their properties.

A University researcher who predicted that laser pulses could generate ultrafast electrical currents in theory now believes he can explain exactly how and why actual experiments to create these currents have succeeded.

University of Rochester chemists are working on changes to existing batteries to provide clean energy when the sun isn’t shining and the wind doesn’t blow.