Materials Chemistry at the University of Minnesota is an interdisciplinary specialty area that encompasses traditional areas of chemical research and focuses on potential applications and fundamental properties of materials. The faculty members associated with this specialty area explore many facets of materials chemistry including novel organic and inorganic materials synthesis, state-of-the-art materials characterization, and contemporary computational chemistry applied to interesting materials.

World class characterization facilities

• Centralized facilities in the Chemistry Department

  NMR Spectroscopy, Mass Spectrometry,
  X-ray Crystallography

• Characterization tools available on campus.

  The Characterization Facility houses many of instruments and is operated as a user facility; many materials chemistry students quickly become experts at a variety of characterization techniques through hands-on training. These techniques include scanning probe microscopy, transmission and scanning electron microscopies, small-angle X-ray scattering, powder X-ray diffraction, ellipsometry, ion beam analysis, rheology, and thermal analysis.

  The Microtechnology Laboratory, an interdisciplinary facility specializing in microfabrication.

  The Surface Analysis Center.

Interdisciplinary Research Programs provides students the opportunity to become involved in existing collaborative programs between several faculty members in our department or in other departments, such as Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Biochemistry, and Physics. Two National Science Foundation funded programs foster these collaborations and many other research opportunities: a Materials Research in Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) and an Integrated Graduate Education and Research Trainee Program (IGERT) for Nanoparticle Science. In addition, many materials chemistry faculty and students interact with industrial partners through participation in the Industrial Partnership for Research in Interfacial and Materials Engineering (IPRIME).