Center for Materials for Water and Energy Systems (M-WET)

Director

Benny Freeman

Lead Institution

University of Texas at Austin

Class

2018-2026

Mission

To discover and understand the fundamental science necessary to design new membrane materials and develop tools and knowledge to predict new materials’ interactions with targeted solutes to provide fit for purpose water from low quality water sources and recover valuable solutes with less energy.

Partner Institutions

University of Texas at Austin
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
University of California Santa Barbara

Quick Facts

Single Slide Overview
Technical Summary
https://mwet.utexas.edu/

BES Staff Contact

Amanda Haes

Grand Challenges Addressed

Transformative Opportunities Addressed

Mastering Hierarchical Architectures and Beyond-Equilibrium Matter

Trans. Opp. #1

Understanding the Critical Roles of Heterogeneity, Interfaces, and Disorder

Trans. Opp. #2

Revolutionary Advances in Models, Mathematics, Algorithms, Data, and Computing

Trans. Opp. #4

Exploiting Transformative Advances in Imaging Capabilities across Multiple Scales

Trans. Opp. #5

BES Reports Addressed

Highlights

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Illustration showing a crystal structure, with balls connected by lines and a blue ball increasing in size moving above the structure

Thin Materials and Fat Electrons: A Recipe for New Quantum Phenomena

The 2D material cerium silicon iodide contains the same heavy electrons responsible for heavy fermion physics, something so far seen only in 3D materials.

Applying a voltage to lanthanum strontium manganite (LSMO) can cause it to separate into distinct regions with dramatically different magnetic properties, as illustrated by the red and blue colors in the above figure.

Tuning Magnetism With Voltage Opens a New Path to Neuromorphic Circuits

Experiments show that applied voltage can dramatically alter the magnetic properties of quantum materials.