The Materials Universe Podcast: Episode 2

[00:00:00] Abbey Stanzione: Welcome to the Materials Universe podcast, a podcast where we will explore the world of materials science and how it shapes our lives. My name is Abbey Stanzione, and I will be your host this season. Join me as I interview researchers from the Center for Dynamics and Control of Materials at UT Austin.

Hello and welcome. You’re listening to the Materials Universe podcast. I’m your host, Abbey Stanzione. Today with me, I have Dr. Delia Milliron, who is the department chair and professor in the Makeda Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Welcome, Dr. Milliron.

[00:00:35] Delia Milliron: Thanks. It’s really fun to be

[00:00:37] Abbey Stanzione: here.

So tell me a little bit about what you do here at UT Austin and how you came to be at UT today. Sure.

[00:00:44] Delia Milliron: Uh, so I’m a professor in the chemical engineering department and I’m also currently serving as the department chair and my background is actually in chemistry and in material science. I did my PhD work at Berkeley.

And after that, I actually started my independent career in industry at IBM Research, um, and worked there for a few years before, uh, returning to Berkeley at Berkeley National Lab, where I was a staff scientist. Um, and from Berkeley, uh, I came to UT about a decade ago.

[00:01:18] Abbey Stanzione: That’s an interesting pathway. Why did you go, I’m assuming, straight from your PhD into academia?

[00:01:23] Delia Milliron: I was really interested in working in research. I knew that pretty early on, and I had taken the opportunity as an undergraduate student to do summer research activities in different research domains. Um, so I had worked at Los Alamos National Lab, and I had done an internship at IBM, and I really liked how interdisciplinary the research teams were at IBM.

And I like the idea of working on problems where we could pursue something that could have a positive impact on society and really make a practical difference for people. combination of the research environment and the types of problems really drew me to IBM as an opportunity. I have to admit, I also was a little turned off by academia when I was a graduate student.

Just what I saw around me seemed to, from my perspective, like there was an unhealthy tension at Uh, leading research institutions, uh, between evaluating faculty, mostly based on research, which of course I, I did care a lot about, um, but also I cared a lot about teaching and I felt like that tension between the mission of universities being.

about higher education and the faculty expectations being more heavily weighted towards research was something I did not find appealing as a place to start my career.

[00:02:50] Abbey Stanzione: That’s understandable. I’m sure that there are graduate students listening to this now that can really relate to that same situation.

Given your broad experience, could you talk about the relative utility or role and contribution of industry versus academia research in your field of work? Sure. Okay.

[00:03:06] Delia Milliron: I think there’s an important role for all parties, academia, national labs and industry and industry is really many different types of institutions, right?

Everything from small startup companies to big companies. Everybody plays a different role in the development of new technologies and the advancement of knowledge. And I guess Maybe, maybe it’s obvious. I think that universities and national labs are most responsible for, uh, both discovering, but also, more importantly, communicating new knowledge to everybody, including to industry researchers, um, and motivating and stimulating the development of new ideas, uh, because it’s our primary mission is education and research.

discovering new knowledge. Um, so that’s an essential element that is really not replicated in industry. The purpose of a company is really to make money. And so that is, uh, not necessarily consistent with, uh, pursuing deeper knowledge and with taking the time to really effectively communicate that knowledge.

In fact, the motivation is, you know, in the other direction is often to keep. Uh, so they have different roles in the ecosystem and also many of the things that we need in terms of technology and that we need to know about technology and the impact of technologies, uh, maybe in fact, even counter to the mission of making money, or they may not be the shortest path or the most effective path to making a profit, which is what Drives companies.

That’s why they exist. So I think each of these plays a different role if we want to in my area I want to see new technologies deployed broadly so that they can have a big impact on reducing energy consumption and on making, uh, the production and the consumption of energy more efficient and also cleaner.

That can’t be done unless there are companies that take these technologies to scale. So there’s a synergy there where it’s not enough to learn about the pathway to solutions. Um, we actually need companies to execute on that and to work in partnership with regular regulatory, um, bodies and with the government to stimulate and motivate adoption.

So it’s really that, that whole, uh, team of contributors has to come together with really good social science, by the way, what drives adoption and opinions and preferences, because if people don’t adopt and take up the technology, become early adopters, become advocates for it, it’s also going to be very sluggish or unlikely to become as broadly adopted as it needs to, to have the kinds of it.

Uh, positive impacts on energy that we envision and that really motivate our research in the first place.

[00:06:26] Abbey Stanzione: That is a really interesting way to think about the different roles that each institution plays and their contributions. Since you mentioned startups, I know you have a fair amount of experience in that area.

Startups seem to be a hot topic amongst the graduate students in the CDCM. So I was wondering if you could talk about your startups and the process from going from fundamental science to actual industry

[00:06:48] Delia Milliron: application. Yeah, that’s an exciting thing to translate from fundamental discoveries through to applications.

And I think I gained an orientation toward doing that from starting my career at IBM, where it’s very much a research center, but every single project is based on. Trying to make something that could at some point, whether it’s in the near future and the distant future, uh, contribute to making a technology or making a technology better.

Um, so I’m always looking for those opportunities and it has gone both ways in my career. So my first startup company, uh, was, um, for smart window. Materials. And in that case, I learned about the market needs and the problems with existing technologies. And that motivated me to come up with ideas for how nanocrystals might help improve smart windows and make them more cost effective.

That has to come together with the right people in order for it to make sense to start a startup company and also The technology has to make sense, uh, outside of a big company. So it has to be something that is disruptive or uses a very different approach. Otherwise, you’re probably better off kind of developing the technology within, um, a big company that’s already well prepared to, to pursue, um, The technical needs.

So that was kind of the story of my first startup was very much, uh, a pull from understanding the problem space. And then we developed, um, the science in order to try to create a new solution. My second startup company is in the hydrogen device space. base, um, specifically working on proton exchange membranes for fuel cells to consume hydrogen efficiently and for electrolyzers to efficiently produce hydrogen from water.

And in that case, um, we were working on what we thought was really just very basic science related to the transport of protons through nanostructured materials. And we made some discoveries that looked, I think, Might actually surprisingly to us have some practical relevance. So we made a discovery late in the PhD of one of my students, uh, that dramatically increased the conductivities we’re measuring.

And so we figured out that this might actually have practical impact. Whereas We didn’t expect that at the beginning of the project. So, so then we kind of race to learn more about the market and again, see if it made sense to develop this kind of thing, uh, in the context of a startup company or whether it made sense to partner right away or roll out the technology to an existing, uh, technology partner.

And again, because it was a more disruptive concept, um, uh, we decided when my student, uh, finished his Ph. D. and, and did a little more market research to, to start a company to develop this, uh, membrane idea.

[00:09:55] Abbey Stanzione: Those are both really interesting discoveries that are now or soon will be in the market. I was wondering what was it that sparked your interest in science and engineering?

Was it something you did as a kid or were you inspired by a teacher? Yeah, I

[00:10:09] Delia Milliron: grew up fascinated with science and engineering. Um, as far back as I can remember, I would always tinker with things around the house, take them apart, put them back together, try to repair things that weren’t working. I built model airplanes and model rockets as a kid.

Um, and I was always really excited to go to the science museum and, you know, have all the interactive exhibits. Um, my mom was actually a psychology professor when I was growing up. And, uh, so we got to visit her research lab as well. And. See the kinds of experiments that she did. So that idea of sort of learning by doing experiments and exploring the world, uh, was very present in my, uh, childhood and, and really motivated and interested and it excited me.

That

[00:10:56] Abbey Stanzione: is really cool. I find psychology really fascinating. So I think I would have enjoyed that too. It sounds like your mom being a professor really influenced you. Do you think being a professor has changed your life? Do you see, like, your scientist side or your professor side merging into your own personal

[00:11:13] Delia Milliron: life at all?

Yeah, being a professor is amazing because you’re constantly interacting with the next generation of young people. getting challenged and reawoken and inspired by them and their responses and their perception of what’s important in the world. So I, yeah, there’s nothing quite like that. There are probably other professions where you have a similar kind of exposure to young people, but that has been really special.

And, um, Has definitely influenced my own personal development.

[00:11:51] Abbey Stanzione: Yeah, that is really special. You know, one of the things I try to express at the beginning of the industrial mentorship program that we run here in the center is that while the graduate students get a lot out of being mentees and having their mentors to help them and guide them, the mentors in return get a lot out of mentorship.

So I’m really glad you brought that up. How do you approach mentoring your students or what would you say is your advising style or your leadership style since you are a leader on

[00:12:21] Delia Milliron: campus? The reason I ended up back at academia after starting my career in industry and then at the National Lab was that I really loved mentoring students, and I wanted that to be a more central aspect of my career, so I find it very rewarding to work with students and postdocs, um, and I guess the advising style I take with them is that I’m really here to support their, uh, process of earning their degree or, you know, learning, uh, through their research projects.

So, I try to give feedback, make connections, make suggestions, but it’s really up to them where they go with their research. Um, and I just help them sort of discover the tools and the methods and, and the, the questions that they might ask along the way. Um, and that. Um, I guess empowerment style is, uh, echoed in the way I approach my leadership role being a department chair, where I guess it’s called like a democratic leadership style or participative leadership style, where I seek to really.

empower people in their own domain. So give people real authority over different aspects of the departmental programs in the case of the departmental leadership role. Um, and you know, I just try to be the glue and be available to people for feedback and guidance and, uh, help make sure things aren’t slipping through the cracks between the different domains in the department.

Um, but to truly have, um, Either employees, or in the case of my research group, the students and postdocs, have a very important and central role in decision making for the group, but also in their own projects.

[00:14:03] Abbey Stanzione: I think that’s a really great way to foster that independence in your group and a great approach to leadership.

Um, your pathway into science and becoming an established professor and leader on campus is a great inspiration to many, but especially to other women in STEM. I was wondering if you had any role models that inspired you and what your experience has been like as a woman in STEM.

[00:14:28] Delia Milliron: I think, um, Someone who’s really been a role model to me in this regard is Carolyn Bertozzi, a recent Nobel Laureate, but I had the opportunity to work with her while I was a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and she’s such an inspiration, um, in lots of ways.

But one thing that she likes to talk about when she gets asked this question is the importance of having Advocates in your career who can help open doors for you, um, and, uh, do so when it’s not necessarily of any direct benefit to them. Um, in fact, it maybe even costs a little bit of their social or professional capital to take a risk in opening a door for you.

Um, but. Those kinds of advocates have been really essential to me at multiple stages of my career. And I think everybody in STEM needs advocates. It’s not limited to women or to other, uh, minoritized, uh, groups of people. Um, but it becomes especially important for people who might not otherwise be, uh, given the benefit of the doubt as readily or seen as like an automatic fit.

for whatever the opportunity or the role under consideration is. So that’s something I’m very aware of, the benefits that I’ve reaped from advocates in my career, and it’s something I’m conscious to try to take on as a role myself now that I’m in a position where I have quite often the opportunity to advocate for people, to open up new opportunities.

So that’s part of it. And in terms of Broadening participation. One thing that I’ve learned is really important and valuable and actually can be done through formal organized programs like we have at the MRSEC, but also just in Everyone’s day to day activities is to help foster a real sense of belonging, uh, for all different types of people.

And again, if you’re, for, for people who are coming from unconventional backgrounds or, um, maybe, you know, underrepresented among the group, uh, it’s more likely that they might be lacking a sense of belonging at first, so it becomes more important, but it’s something everybody can benefit from, um, if you just, Create for people the sense that there’s a lot of different ways to succeed.

There’s all different ways to arrive at a certain place and then a different ways to make your way successfully through, whether it’s an undergraduate um, program or whether it’s a PhD or a research career, um, that there really is, uh, a role for everybody who wants to, to take it up. And especially here at UT, we have, uh, such incredibly.

Brilliant and qualified students that arrive here as undergraduates and also as graduate students, and every single one of them is very capable. Um, and so just remembering to communicate back to them that we know that they can all be successful and that they have a place and lots of different ways that they can contribute and that they’re.

background and who they are is actually a really valuable part of the enterprise of doing science and of, uh, just being in a community as we have here at the university, um, is really, um, important. So as, as we can convey that through our formal programs and through the, uh, kinds of activities that we have for the MRSEC, I think it’s a great vehicle for that.

[00:18:04] Abbey Stanzione: It is really amazing that you are creating that sense of belonging in your group and on campus. It really gives the students that community that they can work through that feeling of imposter syndrome with, because I think that especially people coming from non traditional roots into research, they really battle that feeling of, oh, I, I can’t do this.

But if they have that community to utilize and to feel comfortable talking about it with, it really does help them with that feeling.

[00:18:32] Delia Milliron: Yeah, I agree with that. I also think it’s important to realize that imposter syndrome is something people feel in part because we’ve developed norms and structures where they don’t really fit in, where somebody coming from a different background actually is, uh, You know, somewhat excluded by the the way we, you know, quote unquote, normally do things.

And so there’s an equal responsibility to pay attention to the types of things that we do that might, um, encourage imposter syndrome. And that can be changed in terms of our just day to day practices. So it really shouldn’t be put On the people who are feeling that way to fix it or to address the issue.

Of course, they have to write their living it. But it’s really everyone’s responsibility to develop a more inclusive, welcoming environment and to open up like consideration of different factors that impact people. So for example, just really practical, simple things like scheduling meetings at a time that accommodates people that might need to go pick up children from daycare, um, is something that has come up in my research group, like when do we schedule a group meeting, you know, and I’ve often had people in my group who have young children.

And so it’s not a matter of, oh, well. We’ll, we’ll separately address, you know, make sure you get updated. It’s like, let’s make sure they can be fully participatory by setting up our structural aspects of the programs in a way that truly invites and includes, uh, the participation of people who might be coming, uh, with different, uh, kind of sets of constraints in their

[00:20:15] Abbey Stanzione: lives.

Yeah, totally. I mean, people listening to the podcast can’t see how vigorously I am nodding along while you’re saying these things because it is so true. It’s so unfortunate that the person feeling the imposter syndrome is often the one left to work through it instead of people adjusting to help them.

I was wondering what your thoughts are on what the most important qualities are for someone to succeed as a scientist.

[00:20:41] Delia Milliron: I think that understanding and being able to think creatively about how the knowledge that you Develop through your coursework, for example, can be applied in a new situation. That’s what makes research go forward, right?

That’s what’s important. Um, so the more self reflective people can be or are naturally about the things they’re learning, and the more curious and motivated they are to look for connections and to learn. You know, sort of stretch their knowledge into different domains. I think that’s really what drives success.

And yeah, I think a lot of very successful scientists were not necessarily straight A students. And especially if you come in, um, without as much, uh, academic preparation, it would be a silly expectation to, you know, achieve by the grade book, you know, the same kind of metrics that some other students who had a lot more advantages are attaining.

But that is, I would say, basically has no bearing on, you know, your ability to translate knowledge into success as a, as a researcher or, you know, as an engineer, for example, in different ways.

[00:22:05] Abbey Stanzione: I couldn’t agree more. I think it was Walt Disney who said, curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. And speaking of new paths, I’d like to take our conversation down a path of your research here at UT.

Could you tell us more about what your group is working on?

[00:22:19] Delia Milliron: My research centers on nanoscale materials, specifically on nanocrystals of metal oxide materials, and metal oxides, usually we think of them as being, you know, insulators and being transparent, or maybe they’re like the white pigment that scatters light in paint, but they’re kind of optically uninteresting.

And in my research, we study materials that are metal oxides at the nanoscale, but they’ve been made to have really interesting optical behavior for infrared wavelengths in particular, um, by adding or removing electrons from them. So creating charged particles and based on the free electrons in them, they interact with light in really intriguing ways that can both concentrate energy from light to do useful work with it, or just control how much infrared light is transmitted or reflected or absorbed, which can be useful for things like smart windows because we can do this kind of manipulation of their optical properties

[00:23:22] Abbey Stanzione: dynamically.

In the last episode, we heard about how semiconductors normally resist the flow of electricity. But when you apply a voltage to semiconductor materials, you can turn off their insulating properties and electricity can flow through it. Semiconductors have a similar analog with light. Semiconductor materials have something called a band gap, which determines the amount of energy needed to kick out an electron in a non conducting state inside the semiconductor up to a higher energy conducting state.

For electronics, you can use an applied voltage to give the electrons this energy boost, but optics, you can use light. During the quantum mechanics revolution of 1905, Einstein discovered the photoelectronic effect. So with that, scientists can see that visible colors like blue, which have a high optical frequency, carry more energy than lower frequency colors like red.

Now we kind of know how solar panels work and how the size of a semiconductor’s band gap determines what color and what energy light it needs to absorb to conduct electricity. And interestingly, doing the reverse, aka applying electricity to an optical semiconductor, can make it emit light, which is exactly what LEDs are.

Dr. Milliron, can you elaborate more on semiconductors and what their optical properties are? So

[00:24:43] Delia Milliron: semiconductors are basically insulators. They don’t conduct charge very well, um, but they have, uh, the ability to absorb or emit light at specific wavelength that is called their band gap. Basically, it’s the difference in energy between the highest energy electrons, uh, that are in a filled electronic state and the lowest energy available state.

Um, there’s a gap. And so across that band gap, um, And above, uh, semiconductors can absorb light. So a solar cell, for example, absorbs light, um, across most of the solar spectrum, uh, because its band gap, um, is, uh, at the low energy of the sunlight that’s of the, of the photons that are available in sunlight.

So it absorbs everything from there on up. They also can emit light specifically at the band gap. And so that makes them really good, uh, tunable light emitters, um, depending on the band gap of the material that you select. So this has, uh, been used for example, in quantum dots, um, to make really pure color light emitters for things like high end television displays, and also for like.

tracking single molecules in cells. So anything where you want a really distinct color from, in this case, a nanoscale piece of semiconductor, um, this is where quantum dots come into play. They have the really cool property that their band gap depends. not just on the materials composition, but actually on the size of the particle.

So this is the, the background that I had, um, from graduate school was learning about these so called quantum dots, these nanoscale pieces of semiconductors, uh, that led to, uh, the work that we do now in my group on metal oxide nanocrystals. So another. type of semiconductor, um, that’s a bit different than quantum dots, and it’s different, uh, really only in a qualitative sense because the band gap of the metal oxides that we work with is not in the range of visible wavelengths.

It’s a little bit higher energy, so the band gap is in the ultraviolet, which means they don’t absorb everything lower energy than that, including all of the visible light. That makes them look totally transparent, which is why, as I mentioned earlier, metal oxides are usually kind of boring optical materials.

They’re mostly transparent. Transparent, we mean to visible light, but they absorb ultraviolet light. So that’s kind of the basis for, um, the nanocrystals that we work on. And then we modify their, uh, Transcribed Interaction with lower energy light through the addition of electrons, as I was describing earlier, which we can do by incorporating deliberate impurities or dopants in them that have a charge imbalance, which creates, um free electronic charge, and that can interact with light at long wavelengths.

So there’s really this amazing playground of tuning bandgap and doping to, and size, to adjust the way that semiconductors interact with light across a wide range of wavelengths.

[00:28:04] Abbey Stanzione: So, going back to the research your group does, I have to say that the work around smart windows is really fascinating to me and has many applications in the world.

Could you explain more about how the nanocrystals you’re researching enables smart windows to be better?

[00:28:20] Delia Milliron: So, uh, just to put us on the same footing, the way I’m using the term smart window, it’s a window for usually buildings, but it also could be cars or trains or, you know, anywhere you’ve got glass, um, that’s letting sunlight into interior spaces.

It’s a window where you can. dynamically control the transmittance of that sunlight into the interior. Um, and so you can think about glass that on demand can be tinted or made clear again to varying degrees. And the reason people are interested in this is to help save energy. So sunlight obviously brings along a lot of heat gain.

And so if we can dynamically manage the amount of heat that we get into the, in the buildings from the sun, we can reduce our need for air conditioning or heating as, uh, artificial heating as the seasons change and the weather change and so on. Um, in my group, we’ve been motivated by, um, the idea that it’s not just the heat from the sun, but also the.

daylight that we can use to improve our comfort and our experience in interior spaces and also improve the energy performance of buildings, uh, because the daylighting can be used to reduce our need for artificial lighting. So put together. Lighting and thermal control of buildings makes up about 75 percent of the energy used by buildings and buildings use about 40 percent of all of the energy used in the US.

So these are really big numbers in terms of helping ease our transition into a more sustainable energy future is like we want to use less energy just as much as we want to produce it more cleanly. So that that’s sort of the very big picture of motivation. So our nanocrystals, um, that we’re developing are an active component for the smart windows.

And the smart window works by, um, adding or removing charge to different layers, uh, within a device that’s a sort of stack of materials, um, coated on one of the glass panes of the window. And it actually looks Just like a battery in terms of its cross section and functions like a battery in that there are two electrodes and the charge is shuttled between one and the other with an electrolyte in between.

So the nanocrystals I’m talking about. Would be one of the active layers in that device, and they can change the optical transmittance of sunlight, both visible light and infrared light that contributes to heating, um, by the amount of charge that’s added or removed through this electrochemical process.

[00:30:59] Abbey Stanzione: That is really interesting. You know, I’m thinking of a video I saw recently of the color change chromatic windows on the 787 Dreamliner plane. Instead of using the pull down shades we often see in airplanes, they just had the glass changed to an opaque state when you didn’t want the light to come in. I think all you had to do was press a button and it just turned the glass black.

[00:31:21] Delia Milliron: Yeah, actually, I was just on a Dreamliner flight, um, Maybe a month or two ago and saw the latest version of the electrochromic windows that they have installed, uh, which are great. Um, so those are the most established electrochromic technology, which is also used, by the way. in, uh, so called self dimming rear view mirrors or side view mirrors for cars are based on the same technology.

So, basically, there’s an optical sensor, and if someone has their high beams on behind you, um, it’s too bright in your eyes, so the, the mirror, um, has some electronics in it that activate an electrochromic, and it tints the mirror to be darker. So, that’s the same technology on the, that’s on the Dreamliner.

So, that’s, uh, obviously a very successful technology. It’s one that’s challenging to scale to larger areas, like for commercial buildings, for example, where the panes of glass for the windows are meters by meters in dimensions. Um, that particular technology is difficult to scale. It’s also one that Continuously consumes energy in order to remain in the tinted state.

So even Boeing would really like to replace that technology on the Dreamliner, uh, with a type of smart window that, you know, uses a little bit of energy to tint the window in the first place. So the existing technology that is most successful consumes energy in order to remain in a tinted state. And so we’d like to replace that with.

Uh, technology that only consumes energy and only a little bit to switch the optical state of the window, uh, that can be a lot more energy efficient, um, and also scalable to large areas to work for, uh, building windows.

[00:33:11] Abbey Stanzione: It is cool to think that one day one of the new buildings going up on UT’s campus could have these energy efficient windows.

So, for our audience who doesn’t know, the CDCM recently went through a renewal with the National Science Foundation, and we’ve received funding for another six years. Dr. Milliron, you have been part of the CDCM since the beginning, and you were even a co leader in IRG 1. Can you tell us more about how your research fits into the larger IRG 1 research efforts?

[00:33:40] Delia Milliron: So one of the things that’s really special about the doped metal oxide nanocrystals that we study in my group is that their optical properties are sensitive not just to adding and removing electrons like I was discussing earlier, but also to their organization and assemblies and their proximity to other nanocrystals.

So that is the origin of the project that we’ve been working on in the MRSEC is to network nanocrystals together into three dimensional cells. gels. And in those gels, the nanocrystals are very close to one another. They form sort of beads on a string like a pearl necklace, except three dimensional. Um, and their optical properties shift in terms of the wavelength of light that they absorb very dramatically.

And that both Gives us insight into the structure of these gels, which are otherwise pretty complex to study. And it also could be really useful because gels can be reversibly assembled and disassembled or reconfigured into different structures that have different optical properties based on the chemistry that we use to link the nanocrystals together.

And so that’s been kind of the ongoing driving force, um, behind the original, uh, six year MRSEC. And now going forward, we’re trying to gain even more like kinetic control over, uh, the chemistries used to reorganize these networks and make them temporally responsive or change in time and deliberate ways based on different chemical signals, thermal signals.

optical signals and so on. So it’s a whole nother mechanism for making a dynamic optical material based on the reversible and reconfigurable organization of the nanocrystals rather than as we do in our smart windows, adding and removing charge.

[00:35:36] Abbey Stanzione: A big part of having these interdisciplinary research groups or IRGs is to encourage and show the collaboration between various primary investigators or PIs.

And IRG 1 even spans five academic departments. Could you tell me more about some of the collaborations your group has with others at UT?

[00:35:57] Delia Milliron: Yeah, so collaboration is essential to pretty much everything we do in my group, but especially around these reconfigurable nanocrystal assemblies, uh, that we work on in the context of the CDCM.

Uh, the chemistries that are responsive and uh, create the reconfigurability are developed by Eric Ancelin’s group. Uh, the predictions from Tom Truscott’s group help guide our experiments in terms of the conditions that we, uh, can use to reconfigure the materials and help us interpret the optical properties that result from them, um, as well as make predictions about that.

So the. The project as a whole would just be impossible without very, uh, close knit, um, collaborations and feedback loops between, uh, the groups that we work closely with at UT. The

[00:36:48] Abbey Stanzione: CDCM also has a partnership with the Center for Intelligent Materials Assembly, the CIMA, at the Texas State University through the PREM, which is a partnership for research and education in materials that is supported by the National Science Foundation.

I know your group has collaboration through this partnership. Could you tell me more about that?

[00:37:10] Delia Milliron: We’re actually collaborating with Chris Rhodes group at Texas State, um, on electrochemical properties of materials. So this is more closely related to the work that we do on, on smart windows, um, except Primarily being interested in driving optical changes, we’re interested in driving chemical reactions.

So things like splitting water to generate clean hydrogen, um, or consuming hydrogen in a fuel cell to create power and to drive devices with the only byproduct being water. So, um, trying to advance the capabilities of catalysts, electro catalysts in particular, uh, that can play an important role in, uh, the hydrogen economy and helping contribute to, uh, transitioning our energy, um, our energy economy.

Hmm,

[00:38:02] Abbey Stanzione: interesting. So, in the same sort of space as collaboration, I wanted to talk about the recent news around the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The winners were just announced last month, and the three scientists are being recognized for their work with discovering and developing quantum dots. Some background for our listeners, quantum dots are nanocrystals made from semi conducting nanomaterials, and they have applications in LED lights and TV screens, as well as by surgeons when removing cancer tissue.

And so, these men were lauded as pioneers in the exploration of the nanoworld. How do you feel about this prize in quantum dots, and do you imagine the research you’re currently working on would one day become a subject in Nobel Prize?

[00:38:49] Delia Milliron: It’s a very exciting, uh, time for my field to have a Nobel, um, on the things that we work on, on these colloidal, uh, nanocrystal quantum dots.

Actually, the Nobel was for quantum dots more generally, so it recognized some of the earlier work, uh, where the pieces of semiconductor were kind of stuck in glass, as well as the kind of chemically synthesized nanocrystal quantum dots that, um, I was trained in as a graduate student and that are very interesting.

Uh, related to the types of materials that we now make in my group. So it’s really exciting for the field. I have mixed feelings about the Nobel as an award in, um, for a few reasons, but one is that it really. chooses three people to honor when, uh, it’s really a lot more than that, who play essential roles in the development of the field.

And I think the closer you are to a topic, the more apparent it becomes how arbitrary the choice of those three people are. So the three people that were honored for Quantum Dots, uh, made phenomenal contributions, um, but Those of us who work in this area know others who also made absolutely amazing contributions to bring the field to the point where it’s obvious that it has had a really big impact and it deserves recognition with I think something like the Nobel Prize.

So mixed feelings and I have no idea what will be honored in the future by the Nobels because again, it depends on the contributions of many and the development of the field, which is very far from kind of singular contributions that we like to, in retrospect, identify with these kinds of prizes.

[00:40:35] Abbey Stanzione: And what do you see are on the horizon for new discoveries or current discoveries that are coming up in the next 10 years?

[00:40:42] Delia Milliron: That’s really broad. Uh, okay, so I’ll take this in the context of electronic and optical materials, maybe, because that’s where I can pontificate. with a little bit more expertise than in other areas. I think it’s a really exciting time to work in materials for the kinds of applications and properties that I’m interested in.

Uh, you know, we spent a few decades, uh, simplifying and purifying and making perfect crystals of silicon with just a tiny bit of dopants and that, that enabled, uh, microelectronics to exist and to, to grow and take off. And for the last few decades, two or three decades, we’ve been on the reverse trajectory in a sense where things are getting from a materials perspective, more complex and more compositions of materials are becoming relevant to more.

customized and specific functionalities. So there isn’t just one thing that’s a computer anymore, for example, and computing as it becomes more embedded and as it becomes more embedded in our lives, I guess, becomes more specialized. And so there are all these different mechanisms for computation that are emerging and will have different.

relevant applications where they’re most suitable, everything from quantum computers to neuromorphic computing, some devices and even electronics, you know, will be flexible, some will be transparent, some will, uh, you know, survive in space. And these are not necessarily the same systems. Devices in all of those different contexts and so this kind of specialization of functionality and customization I think is a growing trend and you see it also like in very different areas like in medicine, right?

Personalized medicine and medicine that treats each individual’s combination of conditions and substances. Um, Um, and, uh, kind of receptiveness to treatment as itself is going to make things a lot more effective with a lot fewer side effects. So I think you can apply that kind of logic across a whole lot of different areas of this kind of specializing things for different purposes.

And so making materials that can be programmable or reconfigured to work in different ways like we’re trying to do in the MRSEC at a very fundamental level. Uh, fits into this, this big picture, uh, vision, I think that’s, that’s relevant in our society right now of, of functional customization. It sounds

[00:43:30] Abbey Stanzione: like there’s a lot of exciting research with even more applications for the world.

I’m curious to know, before we finish the interview today, if you had to pick another field that’s not related to yours to study, what would it be?

[00:43:43] Delia Milliron: Architecture. Uh, so I’ve always been fascinated by architecture. Um, Art more generally and design, uh, but architecture just sits at a particularly fun intersection.

For me, it appeals to my sense of space and geometry, um, and how that interacts with the human psyche and experience and incorporates design, but also, you know, mechanics is essential. So, yeah. Definitely architecture. Uh, if I had to pick a second, I would go with, um, uh, underwater exploration, but that’s more on the hobby side of things, I guess, and less on the professional field for me, although some people make a profession out of it.

[00:44:28] Abbey Stanzione: That is so cool. I do enjoy some architecture as well, but more so the interior part and like the design and decor as well. So I would like to say thank you so much for sitting down with me today to talk, Dr. Milliron.

[00:44:42] Delia Milliron: Thanks, Abby. It was a pleasure. I really appreciate all the, uh, really insightful questions.

[00:44:50] Abbey Stanzione: That’s all for today’s episode of the Materials Universe podcast. Thank you for listening to my interesting conversation with Dr. Delia Milliron. We hope you’ve enjoyed learning something new. Please leave us a review and share this podcast with your friends or family. You can follow us on social media at Texas CDCM on Instagram and X.

Thank you to the National Science Foundation and the University of Texas at Austin. And an additional thank you to the LAITS Audio Studio crew for their help with the production of this podcast.