Collaborations with Industry and Other Sectors

Nebraska MRSEC provides a mix of basic and applied research with the latter having significant potential for technology transfer and commer-cialization. We have established active collaborations and/or have joint research projects with U.S. industrial companies. Examples of industrial collaborations include:

National Storage Industry Consortium: Advancing data-storage technologies;
NVE Corporation: Studying magnetic and transport properties of magnetic tunnel junctions;
Acree Technologies: Studying magnetic thin films produced by cathodic arc deposition;
J. A. Woollam Co.: Developing magneto- and electro-optic broad band spectroscopies;
IBM-Almaden: Studying new magnetoresistive phenomena in magnetic tunnel junctions;
Seagate Technology: Predicting transport properties of advanced magnetic field sensors; studying novel materials, principles and nanostructures for magnetic recording.

To facilitate new partnerships, in 2006, a MRSEC/Industry Workshop “Nanomagnetics and Applications” was organized, focusing on ongoing and developing research collaborations between industrial and university scientists. The Workshop was extremely successful providing a stimulating forum for recent research and technological developments, fostering interactions of MRSEC researchers with industry, and helping to leverage grant support for MRSEC.

In 2007 Nebraska MRSEC was awarded a Supplemental Grant funded jointly by National Science Foundation and the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI) of the Semiconductor Research Consortium. The NRI includes six leading electronics firms, AMD, Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, Micron Technology, Texas Instruments, and Intel, promoting basic research to develop concepts for the nanoelectronics of the future. This grant will promote partnerships with the companies involved in NRI. It is planned that the NRI industry liaison team will visit the MRSEC annually to learn about our work and provide industry feedback.

Nebraska MRSEC has numerous partners at National Laboratories and U.S. universities. Examples of the on-going collaborative projects include:

NIST-Boulder: Studying magnetization reversal of patterned submicron-sized dot arrays;
Argonne National Lab: Investigating interlayer exchange coupling in magnetic multilayers and magnetic moment formation in magnetic semiconductors and oxides with XMCD;
Norfolk State Univ.: Studying dilute magnetic oxides and multiferroics;
Ames National Lab: Nanostructural analysis of inert-gas-condensed clusters using TEM;
Arizona State Univ.: Developing first-principles methods for electronic structure and spin transport calculations;
Pacific Northwest National Lab: Structural analysis of nanoclusters;
University of Texas-Pan American: Studying nanomagnetic composite materials;
Univ. of Minnesota and Louisiana State Univ.: Studying novel half-metallic compounds.

International Collaborations

Major international collaborations exist with CNRS-Strasbourg, France; Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang; University of Leipzig, Germany; Salford University, U.K.; Academia Sinica, Taiwan; Ukranian Academy of Sciences, Kiev; Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod; University of Würtzburg, Germany; and Research Center - Jülich, Germany