NSF Org:	CMMI Div Of Civil, Mechanical, & Manufact Inn
Recipient:	CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY
Initial Amendment Date:	August 24, 2021
Latest Amendment Date:	September 7, 2022
Award Number:	2117523
Award Instrument:	Standard Grant
Program Manager:	Alex Leonessa aleoness@nsf.gov  (703)292-2633 CMMI  Div Of Civil, Mechanical, & Manufact Inn ENG  Directorate For Engineering
Start Date:	September 1, 2021
End Date:	August 31, 2024 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount:	$992,182.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date:	$992,182.00
Funds Obligated to Date:	FY 2021 = $992,182.00
History of Investigator:	Rebecca Taylor (Principal Investigator) bex@andrew.cmu.edu Tomasz Kowalewski (Co-Principal Investigator) B. Reeja Jayan (Co-Principal Investigator) Stephanie Tristram-Nagle (Co-Principal Investigator) Michael Bockstaller (Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office:	Carnegie-Mellon University 5000 FORBES AVE PITTSBURGH PA  US  15213-3815 (412)268-8746
Sponsor Congressional District:	12
Primary Place of Performance:	Carnegie Mellon University 5000 Forbes Avenue Pittsburgh PA  US  15213-3815
Primary Place of Performance Congressional District:	12
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI):	U3NKNFLNQ613
Parent UEI:	U3NKNFLNQ613
NSF Program(s):	Major Research Instrumentation
Primary Program Source:	01002122DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s):	022E, 024E, 027E, 1189
Program Element Code(s):	1189
Award Agency Code:	4900
Fund Agency Code:	4900
Assistance Listing Number(s):	47.041

ABSTRACT

The development of cutting-edge nanostructured materials for applications like smart surfaces, batteries, and synthetic tissues requires highly interdisciplinary teams as well as tools that can characterize materials across scales. Advanced functional materials have the potential to drive advances in sensing (for uses such as environmental monitoring, disease diagnosis and advanced manufacturing), energy storage for enhanced energy sustainability and robotics (with applications ranging from providing support to amputees and stroke victims to disaster response). The behavior of materials that have nanostructural features from Angstroms to hundreds of nanometers in size must be measured under realistic conditions to characterize their structural properties during use. This Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) award will support the acquisition of a Small to Wide Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS/WAXS) system at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) to address these needs, enabling high-throughput studies at a variety of length scales and under a variety of stimulation conditions. By customizing the system to enable high-throughput and robotic control of experiments, this instrument will facilitate the broadening of participation in X-ray scattering research to users across science and engineering. Through an ?Initiative for fully-automated high-throughput SAXS/WAXS? and annual meetings of the Western PA SAXS/WAXS Interest Group, this project will seed new collaborations that enable next-generation robotics applications and developing methodologies for machine learning-based discovery. Short courses and case studies in existing courses will support the integration of research and teaching, and outreach on SAXS/WAXS will target women and underrepresented groups. Ease of use, automation and remote operation capabilities will facilitate utilization at a national level.

The research enabled by this instrumentation seeks to link material function to structure from the atomic to micron scales. The SAXS/WAXS system will enable researchers to conduct in situ and in operando studies across these scales to address a variety of important fundamental knowledge gaps. Specific goals include the use of the instrument to develop research contributions in the following areas: (1) solution-dependent conformation and dynamics of responsive nucleic acid nanosystems, (2) understanding and mitigating the structural evolutions in lithium ion battery electrodes that eventually lead to damage and catastrophic battery failure, (3) linking structure to function for novel antibacterial peptides, (4) elucidating the interplay between ion clustering and molecular packing/morphology of polymer matrix in governing the efficient transport in ion-transport membranes, and (5) the development of novel copolymer-based architectures in which lock-and-key interactions facilitate self-healing properties.

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.

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