Topic: Teaching "Old" Materials "New" Tricks: Nanopatterning & Microscopy of Multifunctional Materials

Speaker: Prof. Vinayak P. Dravid

　　　　　NU President Abraham Harris Chaired Professor

　　　　  Materials Science & Engineering,

　　　　  Director, NUANCE Center

　　　　  Director, Global McCormick Initiative (GMI)

　　　　  Founding Member, International Institute for Nanotechnology，

　　　　  Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

Abstract：

The recent decade has witnessed a remarkable convergence of physical sciences, biology and engineering under the broad umbrella of nanoscience and nanotechnology. Indeed, there is an obvious synergy among these apparently disparate disciplines when the length scales of phenomena and structures approach the nanoscale. This has led to the emergence of several innovative approaches to pattern and hierarchical arrange intricate nanoscale architecture for functional devices - with requisite precision, accuracy and diversity of materials systems.

As an offshoot, patterned nanoscale architecture offers unprecedented opportunities to revisit fundamental materials science phenomena, under spatial and dimensional constraints. The dimensional constraints (in zero, one or two-dimensions) and spatial constraints (from substrate and/or overlayers) of patterned nanostructures flirt with thermodynamics of constrained systems on one hand and dynamics of nanoscale processes on the other. This offers unprecedented opportunity to apply conventional and emerging microscopy to understand the statics and dynamics of nanostructured systems.

The presentation will first cover patterning and lithography down to nanoscale, with an emphasis on multifunctional soft, hard and hybrid materials. In particular, our group is involved in harnessing fundamental interactions between electrons and scanning probe with substrate, for both lithography and microstructural analysis. Recently introduced facile soft electron beam lithography (soft-eBL) scheme is being utilized for making “tailor-made” interfaces and surfaces for understanding nucleation, growth, shape evolution and strain effects in surface patterned nanoscale architecture.

Advanced scanning probe, in-situ and ex-situ electron, ion and photon microscopy, spectroscopy and synchrotron x-ray scattering approaches are being employed to fathom the most intricate details of the internal “microstructure” of nanostructures, coupled with innovative tools to validate their functional identity and localized properties.

It will be argued that multifunctional nanostructures go beyond the “hype”, and present challenging yet exciting opportunities for synthesis-structure-architecture-form-function-performance relationships in complex materials systems.

 

CV-Prof. Vinayak P. Dravid