Overview

The mission of FAME is to create and investigate new nonconventional atomic scale engineered materials and structures of multi-function oxides, metals and semiconductors to accelerate innovations in analog, logic and memory devices for revolutionary impact on the semiconductor and defense industries.

Research Focus

In order to fulfill the mission, our strategy focuses on prediction, growth and multifunctional properties of nano scale materials and structures to address the broad consortia research needs. The Center will have strong theoretical efforts to guide the experimental efforts in both material growth and exploration of new phenomena. As such we have developed a center consisting of four themes supplemented with a Discovery Initiative to build within the themes.

Theme 1: Multiferroic & Multifunctional Materials: This theme aims to create and synthesize multifunctional transition metal complex oxides and heterostructures as well as the electric field control of their stereostructures.

Theme 2: Multi-metal and Spintronic Materials: This theme aims to develop advanced new multi-metals and associated spintronic materials and structures to enable devices that reduce power consumption of non-volatile magnetic memory, magnetic logic and analog devices, when integrated with those of Theme 1. In particular, new effects of multi-metal/insulator interface will be explored for electric field control of magnetic properties.

Theme 3: Van der Waals Materials: This theme aims to develop vdW atomic layered materials that present a class of quantum materials with ultimate atomic scale control. These materials when properly engineered, may give rise to strong electron correlation effects and provide a new material platform to realize novel analog, logic, memory, sensors and transducers.

Theme 4: Physics, Mechanisms, and Device Prototyping: Theme 4 pursues the physics and solutions, theoretically and experimentally for reducing energy dissipation and continued scaling, and to achieve performance benefits of analog/memory/logic and integrated circuits by exploiting unique properties of the materials from the above Themes 1-3. With atomic layer accurate interfaces, new multi interfacial phase transitions controllable by the interplay of strain, electric and magnetic fields, will be used for exploration of device physics, device mechanisms and device prototyping.

Discovery Initiative: This new Discovery Initiative is aimed at funding high-risk projects based on most recent discoveries in basic science from within and outside of the Center in order to accelerate the applications beneficial to the sponsors and to further our mission-oriented research.