Materials science

Berkeley ingenuity keeps lithium-ion batteries at temps even Goldilocks would love

10/22/18 — Berkeley engineers have come up with a clever and inexpensive solution to automatically regulate the temperature of lithium-ion batteries. Their technology could expand the practical use of electric vehicles and consumer electronics in more extreme temperatures.

Fiona Doyle to retire

08/27/18 — Fiona Doyle, vice provost of graduate studies, longtime leader in the College of Engineering and campus, champion of student services and an influential pioneer in mineral engineering, will retire in June 2019 after a remarkable 36-year career at Berkeley. Read more about her many accomplishments

Evan Rambo at football practice in Memorial Stadium

Evan Rambo making plays in world of sports technology

08/13/18 San Francisco Chronicle — Cal football safety Evan Rambo teamed up with students from materials science and engineering, chemical biology and EECS to develop force-tracking wearable technology, a concept that won the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship of Technology' Collider Cup competition.

UC Berkeley to co-lead DOE center to study corrosion in nuclear reactors

08/06/18 — Berkeley engineers are co-leading a new DOE-funded Energy Frontier Research Center to study how extreme conditions such as radiation exposure and corrosion affect nuclear reactor materials. The new center, led by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, is called the Fundamental Understanding of Transport Under Reactor Extremes, or FUTURE.

Bakar Fellows Steven Conolly, David Schaffer, Ming Wu and Ting Xu

Engineering innovators join Bakar ranks

07/27/18 — Berkeley Engineering faculty members Steven Conolly, Ming Wu, Ting Xu and David Schaffer are among the new members of the Bakar Fellows Program.

Eugene Haller, leading expert in semiconductor materials, dies at 75

06/28/18 — Eugene E. Haller, professor emeritus of materials science and engineering, founder of Berkeley Lab's Electronic Materials Program and a pioneer in the field of ultrapure materials, died June 22.

Mashup of photo of McLaughlin Hall and the Mechanical and Electrical Engineering Building (date unknown) with photos of current students

Then & now

06/02/18 — Over the past 150 years, Berkeley Engineering has created a legacy of innovation and public service.

Solar power windows

06/02/18 — Researchers have created windows that automatically darken to block heat while also generating electricity.

schematic illustrating the variation of electron energy in different states, represented by curved surfaces in space

Valleytronics discovery could extend limits of Moore’s Law

04/16/18 Berkeley Lab — New research from Berkeley Lab, co-led by materials science and engineering Ph.D. candidate Shuren Lin, finds useful new information-handling potential in tin sulfide, a candidate “valleytronics” transistor material that might one day enable chipmakers to pack more computing power onto microchips.

Diagram of how thin film device converts waste heat into energy

Thin film converts heat from electronics into energy

04/16/18 — Nearly 70 percent of the energy produced in the United States is wasted as heat - from exhaust pipes, high-speed electronics and other sources. Now Berkeley engineers have developed a thin-film system that can produce energy from these waste sources at unprecedented levels.

New technology could wean battery world off cobalt

04/11/18 — A research team led by Gerbrand Ceder, professor of materials science and engineering, has devised a way to build lithium battery cathodes using materials that have greater capacity, and a far lower price, than the traditional cobalt.

Grad program rankings edge still higher

03/19/18 — In the latest U.S. News & World Report rankings of graduate programs, Berkeley Engineering and its departments held steady or moved higher in all categories, including electrical engineering joining CEE as the top-ranked program in the nation.

white fiber mat containing a stable enzyme that can break down a toxic chemical

Protein ‘mat’ can soak up pollution

03/15/18 — Berkeley researchers led by Ting Xu, professor of materials science and engineering and chemistry, have found a unique way to keep proteins active in synthetic environments, using this breakthrough technology to create fiber mats that can trap chemical pollution.

Award winners Lane Martin and Arvind Dasgupta with EH&S Director Patrick Goff and Vice Chancellor for Research Randy Katz

Prometheus Group honored for lab safety

02/23/18 — The Prometheus Group, headed by materials science and engineering professor Lane Martin, has won UC Berkeley's grand prize for lab safety for the team's commitment to safe practices in their work on functional complex-oxide thin-film materials.

Slide containing cesium-doped perovskite that is transparent at room temperature but turns dark at high temperatures

Study shows solar power potential for smart window material

01/22/18 — Smart windows that automatically adjust their transparency in response to light conditions could potentially generate power as well, according to a new study led by Berkeley researcher Peidong Yang, who holds a joint appointment in materials science and engineering. The new study shows that perovskite can switch back and forth between transparency and non-transparency while retaining its electronic properties.

New research centers to help usher in future of microelectronics

01/19/18 — The Semiconductor Research Corporation announced six new multi-university research centers, and Berkeley Engineering faculty are leading partners in three of them. The centers aim to jump-start future technologies for the microelectronics industry.

Radical new battery technology for a $130,000 electric sedan

01/12/18 LA Times — Solid-state automotive batteries, like those being designed for Fisker Inc.'s all-electric EMotion supercar, will eventually exist, says materials science and engineering professor Gerbrand Ceder, but “it's not going to happen as fast as people think.”

A new metacanvas for metamaterials

12/13/17 — Junqiao Wu and Jie Yao, professors of materials science and members of Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division, asked themselves how it might be possible to create metamaterial devices that could be erased and written over again - like an Etch A Sketch drawing toy - to quickly yield a quite different device.

Mark Asta appointed Materials Sciences Division Director at the Berkeley Lab

11/28/17 — Mark Asta has been appointed Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division Director. Asta will step down from his current position as chair of the department of materials science and engineering on January 1, 2018, in order to begin the new position.

Major progress in realizing new type of lithium cathode

11/02/17 Berkeley Lab — A team of Berkeley Lab scientists led by Gerbrand Ceder, professor of materials science and engineering, have reported major progress toward making lithium battery cathodes with so-called “disordered” materials.