5 Risky MIT Research Ventures You Should Know About

High-risk investments can yield high returns. And such projects are exactly why MIT has set up the Amar G. Bose research grant. The university wants to help fund potentially revolutionary research pursuits that might sound too good to be true and, as such, might encounter difficulties in attracting investment cash.  

Many of these ideas are considered impossible to fund through traditional sources, and thus often go unexplored. Such endeavors were of particular interest to Bose, an engineer, founding chairman of Bose Corp., and an MIT professor, who was driven to explore controversial ideas and pursue projects that many deemed impossible.

Since his death in 2013, research grants have been given out in his name to help fund such projects.

To give you an example of the types of projects that have attracted funding, we've rounded up five promising proposals that were selected to receive funding of up to $500,000 over three years, announced by MIT:

1. Etching Silicon

Sylvia Ceyer, professor of chemistry at MIT, has been working with xenon difluoride (XeF2) gas, a substance commonly used to etch silicon for use in microelectromechanical systems. Etching involves carving microscopic grooves via chemical reactions on the surface of tiny silicon wafers. These silicon wafers are ubiquitous in modern technology, and for years manufacturers have relied on etching techniques involving XeF2to shrink and improve electronics.

A deeper understanding of XeF2's reaction with silicon could enable us to advance technology with better etching techniques, and perhaps even unlock a yet-unknown chemical principle, Ceyer writes in her proposal. It's her hypothesis that having a fundamental knowledge of XeF2's reaction with silicon can provide microelectromechanical systems and photonics engineers with a novel tool for etching surfaces into unique shapes, advancing technology tremendously.

2. Rare Earth Electronics

There are numerous rare earth elements that serve as vital components to many manufacturing processes and products--compounds that are extremely useful given their unusual material properties. Joseph Checkelsky, an assistant professor of physics at MIT, has set his sights on using these unique elements in electronics, in an effort to broaden the limits of many existing technologies.

"The unique aspects of compounds containing these elements have already opened the door to significant technological impact in permanent magnet, lighting, and battery technologies," Checkelsky told university news.

However, as Checkelsky points out in his grant proposal, these elements have been less impactful in the field of electronics. The biggest reason for that is the difficult nature rare earth elements present when working with them. The large number of interacting electrons in these elements makes their behavior difficult to understand and predict, while many of these compounds are also so volatile that they rapidly degrade when exposed to air.

Checkelsky seeks to create a device with this grant that will help him study these elements and measure their material properties, so that they can hopefully discover new innovative functionalities.

3. Diamond-Powered Electronic Materials

Diamonds possess an unusual combination of thermal and electrical properties, which makes them a promising candidate for semiconducting material for use in transistors. That is until intensive research in the 1980s and '90s found it seemingly impossible to manipulate diamond into the right state for diamond transistors.

Jesús del Alamo, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, believes that the vision of diamond transistors could finally be possible, as he cites a technique that could serve as a major breakthrough that can overcome the obstacles the project faced in years past.

Through a technique called "surface transfer doping," charge is transferred from the surface of diamond to another "acceptor" material. In collaboration with Rafi Kalish, a professor of physics at the Technion in Israel, the two found that molybdenum trioxide can serve as an exceptional acceptor for hydrogen-terminated diamond. Of the research's potential, del Alamo wrote that this new material system could hold the key to exploiting the extraordinary properties of diamond as an electronic material, with applications in power electronics, quantum computing, and biologically-compatible electronics.

4. LEDs Powered by Ambient Heat

These days, alternative energy sources remain a significant interest as we look to wean ourselves from polluting and inefficient power sources. Rajeev Ram, a professor of electrical engineering at MIT, looks to develop a super-efficient LED light that uses ambient heat as a partial energy source. With such an energy source, Ram says is the "first to achieve greater than 100% electrical-to-optical conversion efficiency in any optoelectronics device." (A 2012 article in the UK edition of Wired explained how the device does not violate the First Law of Thermodynamics.)

Ram's group achieved experimental results that support this idea in theory, showing in 2012 that energy from heat could be absorbed by LEDs, and used to emit small amounts of infrared light. While the result establishes the possibility of such LEDs, the idea of creating a 100%, or greater than 100%, efficient light bulb is still a dream in the making. Ram hopes that with the support of the Bose Grant, he can make progress toward creating microelectronics and photonics that are more efficient through the use of ambient heat as an energy input.

5. Using Biochemical Molecules to Map Space

As a professor in MIT's departments of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences and Physics, Sara Seager found herself interested in the idea of mapping biochemical space to search for life beyond our own planet. She and her colleagues noted that most types of small molecules--those with low molecular weights--in Earth's atmosphere are produced by life. In her grant proposal, Seager noted that this empirical information motivated her to ask whether or not all such molecules might be produced by life.

With the Bose Grant, Seager and her team hope to create a database of all the molecules produced by life, and how commonly they are made. The goal being to create a biochemical map of space, defining which areas would be easy, hard, and impossible for these molecules to exist.

"This insight holds promise for understanding the nature and origin of life," Seager writes in her proposal. "As well as applications in drug discovery, toxicology, synthetic biology, and other sciences where chemistry and biology intersect." Seager is hopeful that such research could help us better understand the limitations of life's capabilities, as well as enhance our own understanding of the universe and our place in it.

Kristopher Sturgis is a contributor to Qmed and MPMN.

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