Li, an assistant professor of physics, will lead work probing and characterizing electron nematicity — a phenomenon in which electrons align themselves in a symmetry-breaking pattern under the influence of a unit of electrical charge called a Coulomb interaction — in the 2D material multilayer graphene. Understanding this interaction can serve as a foundation for future quantum material engineering. 

The project, “Probing electron nematicity in multilayer graphene heterostructures,” is a collaboration with Brenda Rubenstein, an associate professor of chemistry, who will serve as co-principal investigator. The pair will work together to study the nematicity of the electrons, which is believed to be an important ingredient in unconventional superconductivity. Li will be building a system to physically measure the nematicity through experiments while Rubenstein, a theorist in quantum chemistry, will build a model to simulate the interactions and measurements.

“Through our combined effort, we hope to gain a deeper understanding of how electron interaction gives rise to electronic nematicity, a behavior and arrangement in material that can influence how well an electrical current will be conducted in a material in different directions,” Li said. “The general direction that we're going in is to better understand electronics interaction and its influence on other quantum phases of the intriguing material platform of graphene.”

Rodriguez, an assistant professor of engineering, is leading the theoretical modeling effort on soft materials. The project, “Theoretical modeling of non-spherical inertial cavitation for anisotropic soft matter rheometry,” is a collaboration with David Henann, an associate professor of solid mechanics.

The work aims to advance a method for characterizing how materials, like biological tissue, become deformed when they are hit by blunt objects at high speeds. The technique, which originated at Brown, is called Inertial Microcavitation Rheometry and involves generating a single bubble, in this case using a laser, in a soft gel to measure the properties of the material at high speeds and strains. The researchers will use modern statistical modeling techniques, numerical simulations and theory to determine the properties of different kinds of soft materials and their response to the impact.

“Our ability to characterize response of soft matter at high strain rates is critically important to then begin to predict the sustained damage due to blast loading or blunt impacts,” Rodriguez said. “This basic research is at the cross-section between fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, soft matter and biomedical applications which started at Brown, and we now continue that story and aim to further advance this technique and field.”