Our Mission

The ultimate goal of the Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS) is to contribute to shaping a better future by producing innovative energy functions based on material science.

Throughout history, humanity has brought about societal transformations through multiple energy revolutions. The Industrial Revolution enabled work to be performed using the heat from burning coal. Electromagnetism led to the invention of generators and power grids, which significantly transformed people’s lives. Later, coal was replaced by oil and natural gas, and the utilization of nuclear energy based on the theory of relativity also progressed. CEMS will lead a new energy revolution by harnessing the functions created by the collective behavior of electrons in solids.

CEMS has two major missions.

The first mission is to achieve high efficiency in the collection and conversion of energy.

Great expectations have been placed on technologies such as solar cells, which create energy without relying on fossil fuels, but it remains a challenge to increase the efficiency of photovoltaic conversion. CEMS is working to create materials that will help address energy problems by, for example, developing organic solar cells that raise energy conversion efficiency by controlling the position of molecules based on the principles of supramolecular chemistry. Further, through strongly correlated physics, researchers are working to control numerous interacting electrons within a solid, in order to develop technology that will enable a highly efficient conversion of heat into electricity. 

The second mission is to create electronic devices that use very little energy. Modern information technology consumes vast amounts of energy. Some strongly correlated electron systems can quickly change between a metal and insulator states with a small electric stimulus. By leveraging this property, CEMS is working to create extremely low-power memory devices and circuits. CEMS is also developing basic technology of physical reservoir computing and semiconductor-based quantum computing, which enable high-speed processing of large amounts of complex information. 

CEMS will fulfill its crucial missions through collaborations between physics, chemistry, and electronics, contributing to the establishment of a sustainable and environmentally conscious society.