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News and Highlights
View Proceedings Papers from the Meeting "The future will be full of light."
The plenary session was the major event of the day. MRS President Howard Katz started the proceedings by welcoming everyone in the packed room. A representative from the Boston visitors bureau and convention services, Beth Staley, announced that the mayor of Boston has designated today as "Materials Science Day" in the city in honor of MRS and the Fall meeting. Next, vice-president Dave Eaglesham recognized the meeting chairs, Shefford Baker, Julia Hsu, Beth Stadler and Richard Vaia. He also recognized the MRS Bulletin organizers for the year, Paul Drzac, Tony Haynes and Helena van Swygenhowen.
Past President Merrilea Mayo then introduced Karen Pavese, the current MRS/OSA congressional fellow. She also recognized Robert Hull and Ted Bessmann for their work relating to public policy activities for the Society. Secretary Al Hurd introduced four new MRS University Chapters at Northeastern Univ., Carnegie Mellon Univ., Kent State Univ. and Johns Hopkins Univ. Finally President Katz gave special recognition to Shenda Baker and Alan Taub for their significant contributions to the Strange Matter project.
President Katz then introduced the plenary speaker Prof. Mildred S. Dresselhaus (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) [Dresselhaus website at MIT]. Her talk focused on addressing the grand challenges in future energy needs through advanced nanostructured materials, and addressed five broad areas. First, she described the challenges facing humankind in terms of energy requirements which continue to grow rapidly. She described the importance of and the drivers for the hydrogen economy. Next, Dresselhaus gave a broad introduction to the burgeoning field of nanoscience and nanotechnology. The third area she discussed was one-dimensional nanostructures including nanowires, nanotubes and atomic lines. Fourth, she overviewed the special properties of 1D systems and described why they are important and different from other systems. Finally, she discussed the use and importance of nanostructures for the Hydrogen Economy. She reiterated the importance of advanced materials and nanoscience on addressing grand challenges related to a sustainable energy supply for the 21st century and beyond. She concluded by suggesting that the younger scientists in the audience had a critical role in this regard to come up with new and innovative ideas.
Symposium X - Frontiers of Materials Research The theme running through the symposium X talks for this meeting is the path from the laboratory to the marketplace. In other words, it is critical that technologies studied and developed in the laboratory find their way to becoming commercial products. This is a difficult road and the presentations in symposium X are intended to describe the challenges and successes in this process. The first symposium X talk was presented by Donald Keck (State Univ. New York, Big Flats) on Optical Fibers. Keck, who is one of the inventors of the first operational optical fiber for communications at Corning also used it as an example of how a technology can be brought into the marketplace. He presented a broad historical overview of the optical fiber beginning with the first fiber built in 1951. He described in detail the early 1970s when he and other coworkers successfully created an optical fiber with a rod-in-tube structure that achieved 20 dB/km using a laser.
"New" builds on "old". - Donald Keck Keck stressed that this was not the end, and his group at Corning had to persist and work hard before the optical fiber could be sold in the marketplace. In fact, it took 16 years for it to become profitable for the company which is an important lesson for new technologies. Today, over three decades after the original work, more than 800 million kilometers of installed optical fiber forms our communication network backbone, enabling the Internet and providing for our ever more-connected nation and world. He predicted continuing progress for a long time and concluded by saying "The future will be full of light."
The presentation focused on the development of high performance recording materials for holographic storage. In the past, the lack of suitable recording materials has been one of the major obstacles in the path to commercialization of this technology. InPhase's recording media, a polymer system, enables high storage density and high data transfer rate capabilities of holographic storage. The media is a "two-chemistry" system made up of two independently polymerizable systems that allow the performance parameters of the material to be independently optimized. The media is photosensitized to operate with blue, green, and red laser systems. The presentation laid out the storage performance, environmental robustness, and manufacturability of the media. In addition, recent work, that has extended InPhase's original write-once media into rewriteability, was presented. The presentation also included information on InPhase's storage drive systems, highlighting recent achievements in storage density, integration of drive functionalities, and prototype systems. I4.18 P3.3
FF3.1 KK3.4 Technical Presentations - A Sampling
Symposium P Dr. Uzi Landman (2002 MRS Medalist) gave an invited talk in which he reviewed how physical properties change as the materials dimensions are reduced to ever smaller scales and the number of particles is reduced to low values. He summarized a variety of interesting small-scale materials phenomena in his presentation. Most material properties reported in textbooks refer to the limiting case of a very large material volume and large number of particles. He summarized a variety of cases in which measurements of material properties suggest different mechanisms at low dimensions. Nature shows novel phenomena when time and length scales are reduced, emergent phenomena appear, and simple downscaling is not possible. Studying such small-scale materials phenomena requires the development of new high resolution experimental techniques as well as more accurate simulation techniques. Dr. Landman’s approach is to use computer simulation to obtain an understanding of small-scale materials phenomena, an approach he referred to as “computational microscopy”. In his opinion, this is a new set of tools to make predictions, and interpret existent ones. He discussed several types of nanowires including Si and Na, as well as the implication of the small size on quantization of electrical conductance, for instance. Symposium Y Dao discussed two approaches of modeling of cell membranes. The first model is based on using a continuum concept that includes the shear modulus µ and bending stiffness B, also referred to as the hyperelastic membrane model. The second model starts at the spectrin level and assumes a worm-like chain model. Both methods give reasonably accurate results. The scientists compared the computational results with experiments, and found that strain was not distributed uniformly. This observation was made both in computations and experimental work. The group thus established a systematic method to extract elastic properties from optical tweezer experiments. A solid modeling framework for studying single cell mechanics and biomechanics, as well as links to diseases is currently being developed.
Symposium Z Specific focus is on a new material referred to as SELP47K. This material is water-soluble and allows clear film and hydrogel formation through self-assembly. Its isoelectric point is 10.5, the glass transition temperature is 189°C, the decomposition temperature is 332°C, and the cloud temperature is between 30-60°C depending on the conditions tested. The material also allows for interfacial formulation with silicones. Mechanical properties of SELP47K are close to that of Nylon. This new material can also be used as fiber material, as it provides very large surface area for a given weight of fibers once made into nanofibers. It may also find applications in cosmetics, biomedical devices, filtration, aerospace, and can be electrospunned to build nonwoven nanofiber structures. In the second half of his talk, specific examples of newly engineered materials with specifically functionalized properties were given. Firstly, Dr. Kumar discussed possible applications of the new manufacturing technique in creating antimicrobial textiles. The scientists based their work on antimicrobial peptides that are genetically engineered into the protein polymer backbone to functionalize protein polymers with antimicrobial activity. These particular antimicrobial peptides are taken from nature. This allows producing new textile materials for defense application, hospitals, as well as medical care. The second area of application of RSSPs presented was in personal care products. The main conclusion is that by using the RSPP platform technology, the scientists can deliver multi-purpose multi-functional biomaterials tailored for a specific purpose, such as anti-microbial surfaces or new skin care products. Symposium BB Symposium DD Symposium GG An invited talk by Klaus Kern (Max-Planck-Institut fur Festkörperforschung, Stuttgart, Germany) in Symposium GG focused on the directed assembly of metal-organic architectures through non-covalent interactions. The tobacco mosaic virus has an especially attractive cylindrical structure with a length of 300 nm and an inner channel that is 2-4 nm in diameter. Kern used these viruses as templates for the growth of metal nanowires. The oxo-ligands at the outer surface of the virus and the amine ligands lining the channel provide an opportunity for engineering selective metal ligand interactions to target either the surfaces or the inner channels for metallization. Since these viruses can be genetically engineered to introduce different ligands at different sites, they can provide a versatile route towards different nanoscale architectures. Another approach developed by Kern involves the use of molecular linkers with functional groups which coordinate to metal atoms to form unique hybrid metal-organic architectures on surfaces. Careful choice of ligands allows the separation between metal atoms to be controlled with great precision. These hybrid architectures thus have three components: a metal center with potential magnetic or catalytic activity, an organic molecular component with recognition properties, and an empty cavity with possible use in adsorption or as a nanoreactor. Diatoms and other organisms are capable of producing exquisitely sculpted silica architectures, and do it by using 40 nm or less confined-space vesicles for both the synthesis and processing. Matching the complexity of silicon chemistry in nature has proven to be quite a challenge for material scientists. Galen D. Stucky from the University of California at Santa Barbara gave an overview of his research on how emergent materials, the evolution of entirely new properties with increasing physical size, can be generated using molecular assembly. A key question has been to study how to control the very non-linear chemical organization processes that occur in confined spaces. Stucky and his coworkers have recently carried out the growth of composite silica mesostructures in nanoporous anodized alumina membranes, where the alumina pore sizes are systematically varied from 18 to 100 nm. Stucky described the structure-selective synthesis of arrays of organic/silica composite fibers within these membranes. The alumina pore size profoundly affects the composite fiber structure and different shapes such as single and double rows of cages, single, double and triple helix structures, and concentric donuts were obtained at different pore sizes. The organic component of the silica fibers can be removed, and the porous silica backfilled with metals or metal oxides to make mesosculptured nanowire arrays. The predictive design of the composite silica assembly has been demonstrated using self consistent field modeling of the molecular assembly process.
Symposium PP (Materials Education:Communicating Materials Science—Secondary Education for the 21 st Century) The speakers in the opening session on Monday morning focused on materials science literacy, which seemed especially appropriate when addressing an audience of close to 100 high school teachers among materials researchers interested in materials education. Dennis Bartels, president of TERC in Cambridge, began the topic when he pronounced the need for scientists to serve as “Advocate Educators.” Bartels joined TERC after serving as director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. He said that science education must provide both a universal science literacy and a career path. Bartels said that for the past 100 years, the United States developed a policy valuing science literacy for everyone, drawing minorities into the fold. Since 9/11, policy makers became more interested in creating a channel for science careers due to the decrease of science students in U.S. universities since, previously, many of the students came from outside the country. Bartels quoted Ann Druyan who said that the United States needs science literacy in order to preserve democracy. Such literacy, for example, serves as a “science baloney detector.” He said that materials researchers can serve as advocate educators by getting curious about how people learn, by helping others who are good at translating science (museum, media, Web), and by supporting funding for k–12 science education (e.g., testify at congressional hearings). Paul Howell at The Pennsylvania State University advocates materials science literacy through his course for non-science majors: an essay-based approach for teaching an evaluating materials science and engineering. In his course, students must choose one material to explore in their essays during the semester. Howell adds the element of societal/historical context to the common four features of materials. The final essay structure is as follows: Introduction, application for the material, its historical context, processing of the material, its structure, its properties, the a summary and a list of references. Through this approach, students (who are typically not interested in science) learn a broad range of scientific concepts. For more information, access http://www.matse.psu.edu/matse81/. Andrea Harmer, director of Web-Based Education in the Center for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology at Lehigh University, described a hands-on problem-solving course on prevention of the West Nile virus. The course is taught to students in middle-school in which they use Lehigh’s electron microscope, remotely. Harmer mentioned that Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania is committed to making broadband available in all Pennsylvania schools (k–12), which will enhance Web-based education. Tom Stoebe of the University of Washington said that rather than depend on funding for science education from the National Science Foundation or other government agencies, scientists should “take it into our own hands.” He described his materials science and technology curriculum taught for teachers in a one-week science camp. The camp raises interest and excitement among the teachers who then pass on the excitement to their students. The curriculum builds on what students already know about everyday materials. It offers hands-on activities such glass-bending and blowing and the use of Portland cement to make and test concrete. The curriculum teaches the properties of metals, ceramics and glass, polymers, and composites. International Collaborative Research Opportunities A forum on funding for international collaborations was organized by the Materials Research Society’s International Relations Committee. On Monday evening, representatives from around the world presented Opportunities for Bilateral Exchange of Young Researchers. Carmen Huber of the Division of Materials Research at the U.S. National Science Foundation described programs supporting international activities in materials research and education, including mobility support for students and junior scientists as well as support for collaborative research efforts. NSF supports curiosity and/or applications-driven research. NSF has established joint materials research programs with the European Commission and the Americas, and the Foundation is developing opportunities in the Asia-Pacific region, Africa, Russia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. In these programs, NSF funds the U.S. researchers while the other countries are to fund the counterparts. NSF has also established six International Materials Institutes, including the U.S./Africa Materials Institute, located at the Princeton Materials Institute. It is a virtual institute that promotes collaborations between scientists and engineers in the United States and their counterparts in Africa. Wole Soboyejo, who is the project director of the U.S./Africa Materials Institute, talked about the lessons learned so far in this endeavor, followed by an exploration of possible areas for partnerships in the development of appropriate science and technology for developing countries. Soboyejo described the two focuses of the Institute: (1) Advanced Materials/Small Structures (i.e., thin films and organic electronics; MEMS-bioMEMS and bio-nanotechnology), and (2) Materials for Societal Development (i.e., affordable materials for infrastructure and affordable thermostructural materials). The Institute also created eight materials education modules. More information can be accessed at usami.princeton.edu. Nicolas Newman, advisor for the European Union’s International Aspects of Mobility, re-emphasized joint programs with the U.S. NSF. He also discussed Europe’s progress on supporting researchers’ “mobility” once they arrive in the European Union or associated countries. The EU has a goal of adding 700,000 researchers (and replacing those who leave) by 2010. Along with human resources, Europe needs to assist researchers in their ability to move around once they’ve visited the country of their collaborators. A Mobility Policy, by way of a “researcher’s visa,” is being developed in order to resolve current obstacles to the research traveling between countries. Among the research priorities in Europe are nanotechnologies, intelligent materials, and new production processes. Claudia Marco described different types of international collaboration opportunities in Mexico through CONACYT. Her agency coordinates national networks of 27 research and development (R&D) centers, fosters private R&D, fosters strategic academic alliances between Mexican and non-Mexican institutions, encourages state-of-the-art research (both basic and applied), and boosts new high-value-added businesses (focusing on technology transfer and technology development). The agency also provides seed funding for researchers with their beginning projects in collaborative research. Lawrence T. Kabacoff of the Materials Division at the U.S. Office of Naval Research described focus areas for international collaboration and provided procedures for applying for funding. Unlike NSF, the Office of Naval Research supports a very narrow, integrated, use-inspired materials research focused on navy and marine corp needs. ONR supports naval materials by design. ONR supports U.S. researchers’ visits to researchers outside the United States; science and technology engagement programs (i.e., non-U.S. technologists contact with their counterparts in the U.S. Department of the Navy); and contributes funding for conferences. Investigators seeking funding are encouraged to talk with program officers and wait until they are invited before submitting a proposal as proposals are accepted by the program officer without a peer review.
© Materials Research Society, 2004
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At this MRS Fall Meeting, Wiley-VCH Verlag (Weinheim, Germany) is launching Small, a new interdisciplinary journal of nano- and micro- science and technology. The new monthly journal, the first issue of which is now available both in print and online formats, is the first journal to offer its readers and authors an exciting mixture of Communications, Full Papers, Highlights, Concept articles, Essays, and Reviews, with a focus on new and important breakthroughs at the nanoscale, and importantly, at other length scales where miniaturization is shown to make significant advances either in terms of properties or applications. As a journal designed to bring biologists, chemists, physicists, engineers, biomedical scientists, and materials scientists together to report their findings in a broad and lively forum, Small is very much looking to this conference to find the authors of many of its next excellent articles.
FEI Company is offering demonstrations at this meeting of their Quanta™ 3D DualBeam™ SEM/FIB instrument. Quanta 3D offers high vac, low vac, and ESEM™ imaging, enabling in-chamber dynamic experiments, making it ideal for in-situ testing, materials characterization, failure analysis, process diagnostics, and other materials research, and is the first multi-mode SEM with focused ion beam (FIB) capabilities, enabling sample characterization and analysis both above and below the surface, and sample modification using material removal or deposition. Contact: Trisha Rice (
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