Research
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Areas of Research
Structural and Functional Materials

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Metals

Metals fall between ceramics and polymers in terms of strength and temperature resistance, but have outstanding ductility and toughness, which make them particularly useful for structural, load-bearing applications. Further non-structural applications take advantage of their unique electrical, magnetic, thermal, optical, and chemical properties.

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Ceramics

Ceramic materials have unique properties and applications owing to their bond strengths, crystal structures, and band structures. They find use as structural materials in thermochemically demanding environments, but they also have unique electrical, optical, and magnetic functionalities. Northwestern faculty are involved in world-class research on advanced ceramics, from processing to micro- and nanostructure to characterization and devices.

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Polymers and Soft Matter

Polymers are molecular materials that exhibit a variety of forms and functions and are the basis of many industries. Northwestern excels in several areas of polymeric science and engineering, with applications in medicine, structural materials, electronics, and protective coatings, and extends this work to soft matter more broadly, including colloids, gels, liquid crystals, and self-assembling molecules.

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Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials

Electronic materials provide the basis for the information technology that revolutionized the twentieth century and continue to have immediate and dramatic impacts on the way we live. Northwestern research covers semiconductors, photonic and plasmonic structures, transparent conducting oxides, and magnetic materials important in applications from motors to medical imaging to information storage.

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Energy Materials

Generating, storing, and transmitting energy efficiently depends on materials that must work reliably under demanding electrochemical, thermal, and mechanical conditions. Northwestern research teams work on batteries and fuel cells, photovoltaics and solar fuels, thermoelectrics, and superconductors for power transmission, addressing both the mechanisms that set performance and the degradation that limits lifetime.

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Catalytic Materials

Catalysts control the rate and selectivity of the chemical transformations that underlie fuels, chemicals, and emissions control. Northwestern faculty work across heterogeneous, electrochemical, and photochemical catalysis, from single-site organometallic chemistry to oxide surfaces under reaction conditions, combining synthesis, in situ characterization, and computational screening.

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Sustainable and Environmental Materials

Materials research increasingly asks not only how a material performs, but what it costs to make, use, and discard. Work at Northwestern covers polymer upcycling and recycling, substitution of scarce elements, resource recovery, and materials for water treatment, separations, and environmental remediation.

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