Grant Links

Materials science is funded by a variety of organizations. Please browse below to see if the funding goals of any of these featured organizations coincide with your research interests. If you know of any funding opportunities that are not listed below, please let us know.

 

          Download the AFOSR BAA

 

  • DARPA Defense Sciences Research & Technology: The DSO Materials program seeks to advance material science on many technology fronts. Programs range from developing physics- and chemistry-based models that allow for the design of novel materials possessing radically improved or new properties, to innovative processing methods that dramatically reduce the cost of producing titanium metal and its alloys. Mathematical and characterization tools are being generated to enable rapid design and development of new armor systems. Armor systems based on topological constructs are demonstrating an increase in performance not achievable with traditional approaches. Biologically inspired approaches to material synthesis and design are pervasive in many DSO initiatives. Future investments in the DSO Materials program will continue to explore the frontiers of material science, which include new science-based tools for the development of new materials, novel materials for energy and water harvesting, new mechanical designs that exploit or challenge new materials and material systems, and innovative electromagnetic materials that will revolutionize the field of electronics.

          Download the DARPA BAA

 

  • Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences: 
    DOE Basic Energy Sciences seeks applications for Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs). These integrated, multi-investigator centers involve various combinations of researchers at universities, national laboratories, nonprofit organizations, and for-profit firms. EFRCs conduct fundamental research focused on one or more “grand challenges” and bring together the skills and talents of teams of investigators to perform energy-relevant basic research with a scope and complexity beyond that possible in standard single-investigator or small-group projects. The EFRCs pursue the fundamental understanding necessary to enhance U.S. energy security and to meet the global need for abundant, clean, and economical energy.

    The research disciplines that BES supports—condensed matter and materials physics, chemistry, geosciences, and targeted aspects of biosciences—are those that discover new materials and design new chemical processes that touch virtually every important aspect of energy resources, production, conversion, transmission, storage, efficiency, and waste mitigation.


  • Department of Energy, Office of Science (Materials Science and Engineering Division): Research is supported to understand, design, and control materials properties and function. These goals are accomplished through studies of the relationship of materials structures to their electrical, optical, magnetic, surface reactivity, and mechanical properties and of the way in which materials respond to external forces such as stress, chemical and electrochemical environments, radiation, and the proximity of materials to surfaces and interfaces.
 
  • NSF, Condensed Matter and Materials Theory (CMMT): This program supports theoretical and computational materials research and education in the topical areas represented in DMR programs, including condensed matter physics, polymers, solid-state and materials chemistry, metals and nanostructures, electronic and photonic materials, ceramics, and biomaterials. The program supports fundamental research that advances conceptual, analytical, and computational techniques for materials research. A broad spectrum of research is supported using electronic structure methods, many-body theory, statistical mechanics, and Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics simulations, along with other techniques, many involving advanced scientific computing. Emphasis is on approaches that begin at the smallest appropriate length scale, such as electronic, atomic, molecular, nano-, micro-, and mesoscale, required to yield fundamental insight into material properties, processes, and behavior and to reveal new materials phenomena. Areas of recent interest include, but are not limited to: strongly correlated electron systems; low-dimensional systems; nonequilibrium phenomena, including pattern formation, microstructural evolution, and fracture; high-temperature superconductivity; nanostructured materials and mesoscale phenomena; quantum coherence and its control; and soft condensed matter, including systems of biological interest.
 
  • NSF, Materials and Surface Engineering (MSE): The MSE program supports fundamental research intended to enhance the basic understanding of materials in the solid state, including interrelationships among constitution, structure and properties. The broad intellectual scope of the MSE program includes structural and functional materials in the bulk as well as surfaces and interfaces. Approaches to discovery may entail experimental, theoretical, computational modeling and simulation, especially ab initio modeling and simulation and coarser grained approaches, including molecular dynamics and multi-scale approaches through the micro-scale, and combinations of these three approaches. Specifically encouraged are proposals that focus on the mechanical, physical, and thermophysical properties of metallic, ceramic, and polymeric materials and composite materials based on these matrices.
 
  • NSF, Materials Processing and Manufacturing (MPM): The MPM program supports fundamental, hypothesis-driven research at the micro-scale (and larger) on the interrelationship of materials processing, structure, properties, performance and process control. Analytical, experimental, and numerical studies are supported, including novel processing methods for any materials system (metals, polymers, ceramics, hybrids, composites, etc.). Proposed research should include the consideration of cost, performance, and feasibility of scale-up, as appropriate. Research that address multi-scale and/or multi-functional materials systems is encouraged as is research in support of environmentally-benign manufacturing. Collaborative proposals with industry are encouraged.
 
  • NSF, Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSECs): Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSECs) provide sustained support of interdisciplinary materials research and education of the highest quality while addressing fundamental problems in science and engineering. MRSECs address research of a scope and complexity requiring the scale, synergy, and interdisciplinarity provided by a campus-based research center. They support materials research infrastructure in the United States, promote active collaboration between universities and other sectors, including industry and international institutions, and contribute to the development of a national network of university-based centers in materials research, education, and facilities.
 
  •  NSF, Mechanics of Materials (MOM): The MoM program supports fundamental research in interdisciplinary solid mechanics. Emphasis is placed on fundamental understanding that i) advances theory, experimental, and/or computational methods in MoM, and/or ii) uses contemporary MoM methods to address modern challenges in material and device mechanics and physics. Proposed research can focus on existing or emerging material systems across time and length scales; especially of interest are contemporary materials including complex solids, phononic/elastic metamaterials, soft materials, and active materials. Research is welcome in emerging areas of multiscale methods, nanomechanics, manufacturing mechanics, and areas that incorporate fundamental understanding of physics and chemistry into the continuum-level understanding of solids. Intellectual merit typically includes advances in deformation, fracture, fatigue, constitutive modeling, multiphysics, nonlinear mechanics, computational methods, or experimental techniques. 
 
  • NSF, Metals and Metallic Nanostructures (MMN): The Metals and Metallic Nanostructures (MMN) Program supports fundamental research and education on the relationships between processing, structure and properties of metals and their alloys. The program focuses on experimental research while strongly encouraging the synergistic use of theory and computational materials science. Structure spanning atomic, nanometer, micrometer and larger length scales controls properties and connects these with processing. The program emphasizes the role of structure across all these length scales, including structural imperfections such as vacancies, solutes, dislocations, boundaries and interfaces. Research should advance fundamental materials science that will enable the design and synthesis of metallic materials to optimize superior behaviors and enable the prediction of properties and performance. The program aims to advance the materials science of metals and alloys through transformative research on a diverse array of topics, including, but not limited to, phase transformations; equilibrium, non-equilibrium and far-from equilibrium structures; thermodynamics; kinetics; diffusion; interfaces; oxidation; performance in extreme environments; recyclability; magnetic behavior; thermal transport; plastic flow; and similar phenomena. Yield strength, flow stress, creep, fatigue and fracture are structural-materials examples. Magnetic energy density, shape-memory strain and thermoelectric efficiency are examples for functional materials. 
 
  • NSF, Solid State and Materials Chemistry (SSMC): This multidisciplinary program supports basic research in solid state and materials chemistry comprising the elucidation of the atomic and molecular basis for material development and properties in the solid state from the nanoscale to the bulk. General areas of interest include but are not limited to innovative approaches to design, synthesis, bulk crystal and/or film growth, and characterization of novel organic, inorganic, and hybrid materials, as well as liquid crystal materials and multi-component material systems exhibiting new phenomena and/or providing new scientific insights into structure/composition/property relationships in the solid state. Relevant topics include original material design principles, new approaches to assembly or crystalline material growth, characterization of new material phenomena or superior behavior, investigations of surface and interfacial effects on material system structures and properties, and unraveling the relationships between structure/composition (e.g. self- or program-assembled materials, crystalline material growth, and nanostructured material systems) and properties (e.g. charge, ionic, thermal or spin transport, exciton diffusion, chemical reactivity and selectivity, etc.). Development of new organic solid state materials, environmentally-safe and sustainable materials, and fundamental studies of novel material and material systems for efficient energy harvesting, conversion and storage are encouraged.
 
  •  NSF Electronics, Photonics, and Magnetic Devices (EPMD): The Electronics, Photonics, and Magnetic Devices program seeks to improve the fundamental understanding of devices and components based on the principles of micro- and nanoelectronics, photonics, magnetics, optoelectronics, electromechanics, electromagnetics, and related physical phenomena. The program enables discovery and innovation advancing the frontiers of nanoelectronics, spin electronics, molecular and organic electronics, bioelectronics, non-silicon electronics, flexible electronics, microwave photonics, micro/nano-electromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS), sensors and actuators, power electronics, and mixed signal devices. EPMD supports related topics in quantum engineering and novel electromagnetic materials-based high frequency device solutions, radio frequency (RF) integrated circuits, and reconfigurable antennas needed for communications, telemedicine, and other wireless applications. The program supports cooperative efforts with the semiconductor industry on new nanoelectronics concepts beyond the scaling limits of silicon technology. EPMD additionally emphasizes emerging areas of diagnostic, wearable and implantable devices, and supports manipulation and measurement with nanoscale precision through new approaches to extreme ultraviolet metrology.

 

More soon!