MIP: Platform for the Accelerated Realization, Analysis, and Discovery of Interface Materials (PARADIM)

Non-Technical Description: Cornell University leads a Materials Innovation Platform, an NSF mid-scale infrastructure program in the Division of Materials Research. Cornell University, in partnership with Johns Hopkins University, forms the Platform for the Accelerated Realization, Analysis, and Discovery of Interface Materials (PARADIM). PARADIM is a national user facility enabling a more effective way of doing materials research: one that accelerates materials discovery by establishing an ecosystem - a national community of practitioners - that is equipped with experimental and theoretical methods to enable users to realize inorganic materials with superior electronic characteristics.

The scope of PARADIM is the realization of inorganic materials with superior electronic characteristics in the form of single crystals and epitaxial thin films with an emphasis on new interface quantum materials. The inorganic materials realized by PARADIM users have either never been made before or are to be made with a perfection, purity, or interfacing with other materials for which there are compelling reasons to believe that superior electronic characteristics will result.

The open structure of the Platform democratizes materials discovery for all U.S. scientists and makes it possible for users to collectively apply the "closed loop" approach of the Materials Genome Initiative. PARADIM also provides numerous community-building and training components to prepare the future workforce including two annual week-long summer schools on materials-by-design approaches leveraging and informing users about PARADIM's facilities and capabilities.

Technical Description: PARADIM provides an advanced set of openly available equipment and expertise for the realization of inorganic materials with superior electronic characteristics. PARADIM's state-of-the-art facilities include (1) major crystal growth methods, especially optical floating-zone techniques; (2) a fully automated molecular-beam epitaxy system where users can select among 62 elements of the periodic table and see the electronic structure of the materials they produce by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy; (3) advanced electron microscopes for probing the structure, chemistry, and functional properties of materials down to the atomic scale; (4) artificial intelligence/machine learning approaches to leverage existing and new materials data to extract actionable information and aid users' materials realization in real-time; (5) theoretical capabilities to help design and understand materials as well as to analyze experimental data, and (6) a talented team who trains users how to make the most of these capabilities and improves these tools.

The scope of the in-house research of PARADIM is to weave new "quantum fabrics" with tailored functionalities which arise by intertwining different quantum materials. Many new quantum technologies demand materials with properties that typically do not exist in bulk compounds, for instance, topological superconductors or quasiparticles with non-Abelian statistics.

This is often because such properties may arise from multiple states that might normally be in competition with one another in a single compound. By weaving together "threads" with different properties, such as superconductivity or magnetism, PARADIM's in-house team aims to realize quantum fabrics with novel electronic, magnetic, topological, or a mixture of such textures and with functionalities that do not exist in bulk and could play an important role in future quantum technologies.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.