Advanced Materials & Nanoscience

Building an Age of Precision Materials

Caltech's scientists and engineers are pioneering the development of novel materials and devices with superior properties.

Expertise

Capitalizing on diverse expertise in fundamental and applied physics, chemistry, biology, nanoscience, and engineering, Caltech researchers are leading the exploration of the function and design of materials across multiple scales—from length and time to temperature and pressure. Aided by a suite of advanced fabrication and characterization tools and interdisciplinary research centers, Caltech is changing how work is done across the medical, energy, technology, communications, and defense industries.

Research Portfolio

Health and Medicine

Improving retinal prostheses, chips, and surgical tools to improve vision for the blind and people with cataracts and myopia
Developing portable, low-cost disease diagnostic devices and chips
Designing sensors for improving and focusing cancer therapies
Creating artificial heart valves and pumps for use in people with cardiovascular disease
Using artificial proteins to assist in the development of artificial tissues and organs

Electronics

Driving the development of next-generation hard drives with significantly larger storage capacities
Creating higher-quality and more-efficient sensors, transistors, and optical components
Engineering ultrapowerful microscopes, advanced sensors, improved solar cells, and computers that use light for communication and processing
Building fast, efficient global communication networks; improved data-center efficiency

Energy

Designing ultraefficient, thin-film solar cells
Making fuel from carbon dioxide, water, and captured sunlight
Improving energy-storage materials, such as rechargeable batteries
Advancing thermoelectric materials that efficiently convert wasted heat, at lower temperatures, into energy

Quantum Information Science

Leading next-generation electronics, optics, computers, and communication technologies
Improving data acquisition, transmission, and processing
Laying the theoretical groundwork for quantum computers

Materials Optimization

Building lighter, stronger, and higher-quality materials for military armor, vehicles, and manufacturing
Discovering novel composites, polymers, elastics, adhesives, and metals
Studying how materials operate, deform, and change properties at all scales
Paving the way for high-temperature superconductors

Research Centers

Impact

Metallic glasses were first discovered at Caltech in the 1960s and later produced in bulk form by William Johnson's group in the early 1990s.
Richard Feynman launched the field of nanoscience at Caltech with his pioneering investigations into the vast potential of extremely small devices.
Caltech scientists are behind many significant discoveries at the fundamental level, including the origin of entropy in solid materials, why crystals become unstable and turn into glasses, and how stress affects transformation in solids.

Emerging Fields or Areas of Research

Caltech is interested in further exploring the composition of materials and how they function at the smallest scale and in very extreme conditions. This will inform ongoing efforts to create advanced devices and materials that move society and industry forward.