One of the new AAAS Fellows comes from the College of Engineering and two come from the College of Sciences. The Fellows were announced in the journal Science and will be honored at the Fellows Forum, held Feb. 14, 2015, at the AAAS Annual Meeting in San Jose, California.

The new AAAS Fellows at Georgia Tech are:

Christopher W. Jones, New-Vision Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Jones was honored for distinguished contributions to the fields of chemistry and chemical engineering, particularly developments in catalysis sciences and carbon dioxide capture.

C. David Sherrill, professor of chemistry and biochemistry. Sherrill was honored for advances in electronic structure theory and their application in seminal studies of non-covalent pi interactions.

Howard (Howie) Weiss, professor of mathematics. Weiss was honored for distinguished contributions to dynamical systems theory, studies of properties of Gibbs measures and entropy, and applications to models of social phenomena including urban growth.

AAAS is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing science around the world by serving as an educator, leader, spokesperson, and professional association. AAAS publishes the journal Science as well as many scientific newsletters, books, and reports, and spearheads programs that raise the bar of understanding for science worldwide. The three Georgia Tech faculty members were among 401 Fellows elected by the AAAS Council in November. 

This year's Grand Prize is awarded to  for their video entitled, "The Art of Spin" by Nils Persson and Dalsu Choi. The video illustrates the aggregation of P3HT using stop-motion animation and related transistor fabrication techniques to the popular backyard activity, spin art, using a homemade machine.

Nils and Dalsu are in the group of Elsa Reichmanis in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE). The team is awarded the grand prize for receiving the highest overall score. Congratulations Nils and Dalsu! 

Nils Persson is a second-year graduate student studying the mechanisms of formation and properties of ordered structures of poly-3-hexylthiophene. He has been producing videos since junior high, from live concerts to short action films and sitcoms.

Dalsu Choi is a fourth-year graduate student working on the development and theoretic analysis of novel solution processing methods for effective molecular assembly of pi-conjugated polymers.

Georgia Tech-COPE would also like to mention the other students that submitted videos in the contest and thank them for their participation. 

• "Computer Simulations of the Bulk-Heterojunction Morphology in Organic Solar Cells" Khahn Do (Chemistry, Bredas Group)

• "Processing and structure-property relationships in conjugated polymer nano structures" Thomas Bougher and Matthew Smith (ME, Cola Group)

About the Georgia Tech–COPE Research Video Contest
The Georgia Tech–COPE Research Video Contest gives students involved in the field of organic photonics and electronics at Georgia Tech an opportunity to present their research and compete with other students.

The new technique uses a thin film of porous silicon material to coat a layer of light-conducting dense silicon. The porous silicon thin film contains many connected pores and internal surfaces that greatly increase the effective area onto which a chemical component of interest – often referred to as an analyte – can bind. The increased surface area allows the porous silicon to capture larger numbers of analyte molecules, which increases overall detection sensitivity and thereby facilitates detection of analytes occurring in low concentrations.

Unlike earlier methods for generating porous silicon, the Georgia Tech thin-film process is more easily adapted for use with standard silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrates, and also allows for highly precise control of the thickness of the porous silicon layer. The research was described in a recent paper, "Magnesiothermically Formed Porous Silicon Thin Films on Silicon-on-Insulator Optical Microresonators for High-Sensitivity Detection," published in the journal Advanced Optical Materials.  

"A larger surface area means there's more room for the analytes you're seeking to land, and then to interact with the optical signal – the light – that detects them," explained Ali Adibi, Joseph M. Pettit Chair and a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), who co-led the research along with Kenneth H. Sandhage, B. Mifflin Hood Professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE). "And unlike other techniques, our process confines the pores to the thin film layer on top. The porous area doesn't impinge on the dense-silicon layer underneath, and consequently doesn't compromise the optical quality of the devices fabricated in the dense layer and the ability of the sensor to detect the analytes."

The work was part of the Centers in Integrated Photonics Engineering Research (CIPhER) program, a $4.3 million, two-year effort funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop advanced laboratory-on-chip sensing technology capable of detecting multiple biological and chemical threats on a compact integrated platform. Other center participants included Emory University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California-Santa Cruz, and Yale University. 

At Georgia Tech, Professor Mostafa El-Sayed of the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and David Gottfried of the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology were also principal investigators on the CIPhER program. Ali A. Eftekhar, an ECE research engineer, was also part of the technical management of this project. Adibi was the lead principal investigator of this program.

Optical Detection of Analytes

The Georgia Tech researchers are working with a silicon-based optical sensor that utilizes a racetrack-shaped optical resonator capable of coupling strongly with light passing through a nearby optical waveguide at particular light frequencies. The resonator's surface is chemically functionalized to bind with specific bio-markers, chemical components or other analytes being sought. 

As the optical signal passes through the silicon waveguide and resonator, the associated electromagnetic field can interact with one or more specific types of chemical components captured in the silicon surface. If an analyte is present, it alters the resonance frequency of the racetrack resonator, showing its effect on the power transmitted through the waveguide. The greater the concentration of the analyte, the larger the frequency shift, and the larger the effect on the transmitted power. 

Traditionally in bio-sensing, a layer of dense silicon has served a dual purpose. It functions as the waveguide for the optical signal that detects analytes, and it also provides the surface that captures those analytes.

"The problem with that approach is that dense, planar silicon has limited surface area onto which analytes can bind," explained Sandhage, who is also on the faculty of the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. "That significantly reduces how much response you get from the interaction of the light with the analyte."

Previous efforts to create pores in silicon to increase surface area have encountered drawbacks, including complexity – such as difficulty in adapting to standard silicon-on-insulator substrates – and a reduction in silicon's ability to transport optical signals, he said. One such technique, called anodization, hinges on the problematic use of a hazardous hydrofluoric acid bath with an applied electrical current to etch into doped silicon. The technique tends to yield relatively large columnar (two-dimensional) pores in doped silicon, a modest surface area, and higher loss of optical signals.

The ability to controllably convert silica into porous silicon with fine, 3-D-interconnected pores is useful in other applications besides chemical sensing, Sandhage said. These include anodes for lithium ion batteries, optical displays, and inverse opals, which are three-dimensional photonic crystals.

"The collaborative interplay between Professor Adibi's group and my group was essential to the success of this work," he said. "We both brought to bear specific techniques and expertise that enabled us to accomplish what neither of us could have done alone."

A Simpler Method

In their recent paper, the Georgia Tech teams report development of a simpler, more effective device fabrication approach. Using an oxidation process, they first grew silica (silicon dioxide) on top of the dense-silicon layer. Then, using a shape-preserving magnesiothermic reduction process, the Sandhage group exposed the silica layer to magnesium gas generated by heating magnesium silicide. The process has been patented by the Georgia Tech Research Corp. under U.S. Patent No. 7,615,206.

The resulting magnesium gas reacted with the silica layer to yield a fine mixture of silicon and magnesium oxide, but did not react with the dense-silicon layer underneath. The magnesium oxide was then easily dissolved with a weak acid solution to yield a porous silicon layer with very fine 3-D-connected pores, which trapped analytes effectively but did not appreciably scatter light and could be tailored to within about a nanometer of thickness. 

Forming a reliable sensor requires careful design and optimal fabrication of the nanophotonic structures, a task that was performed in Adibi’s group. The fabrication process includes a critical step – using electron beams to cut channels in the porous silicon and underlying dense silicon, to form a patterned structure. This microlithography technique creates tiny trenches in the porous silicon and dense silicon, yielding porous-silicon-on-dense-silicon waveguides and microresonators that guide the optical signals and enable them to detect analytes.

In addition, the Adibi  team used advanced computing approaches to model the materials development process and to design the sensor structures. The models helped the researchers understand which techniques were most effective for producing efficient microresonators.

"We have demonstrated that you can integrate microlithography and controlled-pore silicon on dense silicon without significantly sacrificing the quality of the resonator," Adibi said. "The result is a resonant-frequency response for sensing with much larger sensitivity – by about a factor of six – compared to when you don't have the porous silicon."

This research was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the principal investigators and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsor, DARPA.

Research News
Georgia Institute of Technology
177 North Avenue
Atlanta, Georgia  30332-0181  USA

Media Relations Contacts: John Toon (jtoon@gatech.edu) (404-894-6986) or Brett Israel (brett.israel@comm.gatech.edu) (404-385-1933).

Writer: Rick Robinson

Eligibility

• Graduate students with a Bachelor’s degree by the time the award begins.
• Applicants should have a superior academic record as demonstrated by a GPA of 3.5 or higher. Only students who have been at Georgia Tech for at least two years, and engaged in research for at least one year, are eligible to apply.
• Student supported will perform research in the field of Organic Photonics and Electronics and will present their research at the end of the year to the COPE community.
• You must be a COPE student member. However, we will accept your Fellowship Application as a consideration for COPE membership. Please review the benefits and responsibilities of being a COPE student member here.

Award
The award will provide a bonus of $5,000 to the current stipend the student has from his/her home department.

Deadline
The application deadline is November November 21, 2014.

In his new post, Brand leads an IRI that unites a wide range of faculty, research centers and shared-user laboratories working in the complementary fields of electronics and nanotechnology. This combination of infrastructure and interdisciplinary research activity seeks to fortify Georgia Tech’s expertise in microsystems, advanced semiconductors, photonics and photovoltaics, electronics design, microelectronics packaging, and systems integration, while stimulating new and emerging application areas in biomedicine, energy, and nanomaterials.

"I view my most important task as that of enabling our faculty – maximizing their research involvement opportunities and prospects," said Brand, who was awarded the executive position after a nationwide search. "IEN's job is to help enhance interdisciplinary research at Georgia Tech, and at the same time promote industry-sponsored projects that offer opportunities to develop applications and products in electronics, nanotechnology and related fields, while accelerating new discoveries into the marketplace."

Interdisciplinary research institutes (IRIs) are inclusive units that help connect and support Georgia Tech's 200-plus research centers and laboratories. They extend across college, department and laboratory boundaries to help faculty and staff work with both industry and government on basic and applied research programs. IRIs provide critical research infrastructure, create and utilize novel research laboratories, interact with students, and collaborate with other research partners including corporations, universities and research institutes.

Each IRI is dedicated to one of Georgia Tech’s core research areas. Besides electronics and nanotechnology, Georgia Tech IRIs focus on bioengineering and bioscience; energy and sustainable infrastructure; manufacturing, trade and logistics; materials; national security; people and technology; renewable bioproducts; and robotics (see www.research.gatech.edu/institutes).   

"In addition to promoting collaboration and new research, I believe IEN should be forward-looking and help define future research grand challenges," Brand said. "On the one hand, we need to react quickly and effectively to requests for research proposals coming in to us, and on the other hand, we need to be proactive by seeding concepts that can be used to generate future calls for proposals."

Brand received his Ph.D. from ETH Zurich in Switzerland in 1994. He did postdoctoral research at Georgia Tech from 1995-1997, and then returned to ETH Zurich as a lecturer and deputy director of its Physical Electronics Laboratory. He came back to Georgia Tech in 2003 as a faculty member in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, gaining tenure in 2007 and becoming a full professor in 2009.

"Professor Brand is committed to seeding and growing new interdisciplinary and industry-sponsored research efforts and working closely with faculty and sponsors to define an electronics and nanotechnology roadmap for the future," said Stephen E. Cross, Georgia Tech’s executive vice president for research. "In addition, he is wholeheartedly dedicated to positioning Georgia Tech as the home of the nation’s leading electronics and nanotechnology thought leaders." 

As IEN's executive director, Brand oversees some 60 staff members, and shared-user research facilities that include two major buildings and more than 200 micro/nanoelectronic fabrication and characterization tools in multiple cleanrooms and laboratories (see www.ien.gatech.edu). The IEN and its associated research centers support the work of more than 200 faculty members from 10 academic schools, as well as the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI).

Brand's own area of research focuses on micro-electromechanical systems, or MEMS.  MEMS is a complex field that spans a number of traditional engineering disciplines including mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and chemical engineering, along with physics and chemistry. This interdisciplinary work, he said, helps him appreciate the broad spectrum of research performed under the IEN banner.

Though directing IEN will consume much of his time, Brand said, he will continue to direct a research group and expects to teach some courses as well.

"The research enabled by IEN has the potential to revolutionize medicine, help protect the environment, enhance homeland security, and provide fresh approaches in energy creation and storage," he said. "It can also improve the size, performance and effectiveness of devices and systems used in many other traditional consumer and industrial applications worldwide."

Research News
Georgia Institute of Technology
177 North Avenue
Atlanta, Georgia  30332

Media Relations Contacts: John Toon (404-894-6986) (jtoon@gatech.edu) or Brett Israel (404-385-1933) (brett.israel@comm.gatech.edu).

Writer: Rick Robinson

“The material scale-up facility is a milestone for COPE. Being able to share efficiently our new materials in multi-gram quantities with our collaborators and industrial partners will accelerate their adoption and transfer into new products,” says Bernard Kippelen, the Director of COPE.  

Professors Marder and Reynolds proposed the formation of the facility to EVPR Steve Cross whose office provided resources through the Georgia Tech Institute for Materials (IMAT) for creation of the facility, as part of IMAT’s campus-wide investment in infrastructure. Tim Parker, Principal Research Scientist in the Marder group, designed and oversaw the creation of the facility. The availability of the equipment on campus directly impacts the ability for Georgia Tech faculty and researchers to carryout research and educational activities. For instance, the new capabilities provide the key scale-up resources for a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) sponsored by the Office of Naval Research for the development of advanced photovoltaics.

Located on the second floor of the Molecular Science and Engineering (MoSE) building, the facility serves the organic materials community at Georgia Tech and its collaborators. The facility and its staff support researchers will provide government laboratories and companies with a sufficient quantity of new materials for system-level evaluation and testing. These materials will enable future joint development research programs to speed-up their use in commercial applications.  

The main equipment at the facility currently includes a 20 liter rotary evaporator, a 10 liter reactor with temperature control from -70 ^oC to 200 ^oC, and larger scale purification equipment including a chromatography system with 100-200 gram capacity. The reactor and chromatography equipment are located in a walk-in fume hood with double volume spill containment for researcher safety.

Georgia Tech-COPE works with a number of corporate partners and intends to leverage the facility to further develop materials invented within partner research programs to bring them a step closer to commercialization, such as those developed during the Solvay Global Discovery program. In addition, Sigma-Aldrich and Georgia Tech have recently signed an agreement that will allow for Sigma-Aldrich to test market materials developed and scaled-up within Georgia Tech-COPE.

Georgia Tech entered into a partnership with French governmental entities in 1990 to establish its first international campus in Metz, France. After two decades of innovative educational achievements, a world-class research presence was added in 2006 with the creation of the Georgia Tech-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) Unité Mixte Internationale laboratory. 

Georgia Tech is now moving to the next critical stage of expansion of its global influence with the creation of an innovation platform, the Institut Lafayette. By providing access to a state-of-the-art technology infrastructure; by sharing world-class expertise in science and technology; and by offering business model validation and commercialization tools, the Institut Lafayette will showcase and underscore Georgia Tech’s capacity to help create a full regional ecosystem which can generate innovations of economic and social value for its international partners.

This expansion of Georgia Tech’s global footprint will increase its impact around the globe, and serve to bring the world to Georgia Tech and to the State of Georgia. The Institut Lafayette will create opportunities to establish alliances with universities, companies, and governmental and non-governmental entities whose goals and activities align with Georgia Tech’s strategic mission. This expansion will also significantly augment the teaching, research and entrepreneurial activities of Georgia Tech’s faculty, staff, alumni and students both in Atlanta and in Lorraine. The new facilities also expand the European activities of the Georgia Tech Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics (Georgia Tech-COPE). The Institut Lafayette is expected to serve as a catalyst for economic development in the region of Lorraine and to increase trade exchange opportunities with metropolitan Atlanta, and the State of Georgia.

Located adjacent to the existing Georgia Tech-Lorraine building, the brand new 25,000 square foot facility is comprised of offices, laboratories and a 5,000 square foot clean room, fully equipped with state-of-the-art nanofabrication tools to support innovations in optoelectronics and advanced semiconductor materials research. This facility will be managed by Georgia Tech faculty members who are world-renown experts in organic materials and semiconductors.

This innovation platform will provide a unique combination of research expertise, an advanced technology infrastructure, and an array of technology transfer services which will increase efficiency and accelerate technology transfer.  Its impact and effectiveness will be further enabled by leveraging the resources of Georgia Tech – The Georgia Tech Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI2) will provide expertise in technology transfer and commercialization, and the Institute of Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEN) will provide expertise in managing and operating high-technology infrastructures.

The Institut Lafayette was named after the Marquis de Lafayette, a French aristocrat and military officer who served as a major-general in the Continental Army under George Washington in the American Revolution.   It was in Metz in 1775 that the Marquis de Lafayette made the decision to commit himself to the cause of American independence.

With this teacher centric goal in mind, the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN) site at Georgia Institute of Technology sought funding from the National Science Foundation to establish the Research Experience for Teachers (RET) Program to connect the education of K-12 graders and university level research into the fields of nano-science and engineering. The eight week program pairs teachers with faculty, post-docs, and graduate students, involving them in hands-on equipment usage, experimental processes, and assisting them in developing a lesson plan they implement in their classrooms upon return to their home institution........

Follow this link to meet the NNIN-IEN guest researchers and their faculty partners.

---Christa M. Ernst, IEN Communications

 “The overall goal of our EFRC is to provide a fundamental understanding of acid gas interactions with a broad class of materials and establish strategies for extending material stability and lifetime,” Walton said. “These results will ultimately enable us to accelerate materials discovery for large-scale energy applications.

Five other ChBE professors — Christopher Jones, Michael Filler, Ryan Lively, Sankar Nair and David Sholl, and Thomas Orlando, a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Chemistry and Biochemistry — also will serve as principal investigators at the center. The center will involve work at six partner institutions: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Oak Ridge, Tenn.; the Department of Energy’s largest multiprogram science and energy laboratory), the University of Florida, the University of Alabama, the University of Wisconsin, Lehigh University (Bethlehem, Pa.) and Washington University in St. Louis.

 “Our multifaceted approach to this important problem is unique, and one of our proposal reviewers even pointed out that this will be the first research center in the world specifically dedicated to this topic, said Walton.”

 The research center’s start date is Aug. 1. The awards announced on June 18 are the second round of funding for EFRCs. The 32 projects receiving funding were competitively selected from more than 200 proposals. 

For more information about the EFRC program, click here.

Professor Tsukruk has been selected as Fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS).Tsukruk conducts research in the field of fabrication and structural characterization of molecular films, his specialized field of research since 1987. He has extensive experience in organic and polymeric materials and molecular films from polymers. Tsukruk is an expert in the microstructural analysis of polymeric materials. He has conducted investigations of LB films and self-assembled monolayers from amphiphilic polyimides, rod-like polymers, liquid crystalline polymers, alkylsilanes, dendrimers, biopolymers, and lipids. More recently, Tsukruk has been interested in, nanomaterials; nanotribology; the nanomechanical properties of polymeric surfaces; and nanoengineered devices.

Professor Tsukruk will be formally honored at the 2014 ACS National meeting in San Francisco on August 11, 2014.

The IEN Characterization team opened a visual door to these minuscule works of art last month in their inaugural Monthly Image Contest. From intentionally engineered objects to happy accidents caught on film, here are the winners of the May round –

“Grape cluster"
by Payam Alipour, PI:  Ali Adibi

A nanocluster (particle diameter ~100 nm) of random contamination on a layer of TiO₂ deposited on a silicon piece using e-beam evaporation. Image taken with the Zeiss Ultra 60 SEM located in the Marcus Microscopy Suite, level 0 of the Marcus Building.

"Soccer Ball"
by Jamey Gigliotti, PI: Farrokh Ayazi and Z.L. Wang

Photo of a ZnO Nanowire Sphere with a particle diameter of 3.95µm. Image taken with the Hitachi S4700 FE-SEM in the Marcus Inorganic Cleanroom, level 1 of the Marcus Building.

"Blue Paisley"
by Majid Sodagar, PI: Ali Adibi

Top view of bonded SiN/SOI wafers (through thermal glue under pressure) after backside etching of the handle layer. Image taken with the Olympus MX61 located in the Pettit Cleanroom, level 1 of the Pettit Building.

Congratulations to the winners, who will get 5 free hours on the tool of their choice and be entered into a bi-annual Grand Prize selection for cash prizes!  Also, thanks to all those who submitted.

To see a slideshow of all of the entries, please follow this link.

The second round of the Image Contest is underway so, if you have a mini masterpiece, see the contest details below or contact Walter Henderson at walter.henderson@ien.gatech.edu or Jie Xu at jie.xu@gtri.gatech.edu.

 Image Contest Submission Dates
 Open June 1^st – June 27^th and the 1^st –the 27^th of each month thereafter.

Contest Rules

• Images must be taken on an IEN tool
• Images should not be previously published
• Photographer must provide details with image such as the tool, sample type, PI etc.
• Photo-enhancement is allowed
• Up to 4 entries per user per month
• Submit images as a .bmp file to walter.henderson@ien.gatech.edu

• Win up to $4,500 in prize money! Grand Prize of $2,500 and additional prizes given for content and presentation.
• Create a unique, succinct, 2-minute video that communicates the significance and challenges in your research.
• Deadline for submission of your Registration Form is June 15, 2014.
• Deadline for submission of your video is July 15, 2014.
• Prize winners announced on October 15, 2014.
• All videos will be featured on the COPE Youtube page.

The NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) grant, entitled “Research Experience for Student Veterans in Advanced Manufacturing and Entrepreneurship (REVAMP),” will provide technical training, entrepreneurship and research experience for 10 students each summer. The students will learn the latest manufacturing techniques as well as how to work with the new technologies. They will work side by side with world-class researchers and business leaders in additive manufacturing, precision machining, scalable manufacturing and sustainable design and manufacturing.

“This program will leverage GTMI’s world-class facilities, diverse technical expertise and inspiring interdisciplinary research environment,” said Chuck Zhang, the principal investigator of the grant, and a professor in Georgia Tech’s Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering and GTMI. “It will provide a great opportunity for transitioning veterans and underrepresented minority students to learn the latest manufacturing techniques that can give them hands on experience and prepare them for the workforce in manufacturing.”

In addition, the curriculum will also include an entrepreneurship component that will allow students to learn firsthand from experts at Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute as well as startup leaders at the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC).

The program is currently recruiting students nationwide and hopes to attract transitioning military veterans as well as underrepresented minorities to participate.

“We’re really excited about this opportunity,” said John Morehouse, Director of Manufacturing Programs and Partnerships at GTMI, and co-principal investigator for REVAMP. “This type of program can truly be transforming for the students. It can open their eyes to other possibilities for a career path and even show them the possibilities of starting their own business.”

Students will be required to be in Atlanta for the summer. Each student will be provided support for travel expenses, a $5,000 stipend, and on-campus housing. The program is set to begin on May 27, 2014.

Those interested can find additional information at http://manufacturing.gatech.edu/revamp-nsf-reu.

Outstanding Faculty Leadership for the Development of Graduate Research Assistants 
Kenneth Sandhage, Materials Science and Engineering

Outstanding Faculty Research Author 
Seth Marder, Chemistry and Biochemistry

Faculty Honors Committee Awards

Class of 1934 Outstanding Interdisciplinary Activity Award 
Bernard Kippelen, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Congratulations to all the Georgia Tech-COPE faculty members as well as other faculty and staff members at Georgia Tech on their achievements. For the complete list of Institute Awards see here.

The new thermal interface material could be used to draw heat away from electronic devices in servers, automobiles, high-brightness LEDs and certain mobile devices. The material is fabricated on heat sinks and heat spreaders and adheres well to devices, potentially avoiding the reliability challenges caused by differential expansion in other thermally-conducting materials.

“Thermal management schemes can get more complicated as devices get smaller,” said Baratunde Cola, an assistant professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “A material like this, which could also offer higher reliability, could be attractive for addressing thermal management issues. This material could ultimately allow us to design electronic systems in different ways.”

The research, which was supported by the National Science Foundation, was reported March 30 in the advance online publication of the journal Nature Nanotechnology. The project involved researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Texas at Austin, and the Raytheon Company. Virendra Singh, a research scientist in the Woodruff School, and Thomas Bougher, a Ph.D. student in the Woodruff School, are the paper’s co-first authors.

Amorphous polymer materials are poor thermal conductors because their disordered state limits the transfer of heat-conducting phonons. That transfer can be improved by creating aligned crystalline structures in the polymers, but those structures – formed through a fiber drawing processes – can leave the material brittle and easily fractured as devices expand and contract during heating and cooling cycles.

The new interface material is produced from a conjugated polymer, polythiophene, in which aligned polymer chains in nanofibers facilitate the transfer of phonons – but without the brittleness associated with crystalline structures, Cola explained. Formation of the nanofibers produces an amorphous material with thermal conductivity of up to 4.4 watts per meter Kelvin at room temperature.

The material has been tested up to 200 degrees Celsius, a temperature that could make it useful for applications in vehicles. Solder materials have been used for thermal interfaces between chips and heat sinks, but may not be reliable when operated close to their reflow temperatures.

“Polymers aren’t typically thought of for these applications because they normally degrade at such a low temperature,” Cola explained. “But these conjugated polymers are already used in solar cells and electronic devices, and can also work as thermal materials. We are taking advantage of the fact that they have a higher thermal stability because the bonding is stronger than in typical polymers.”

The structures are grown in a multi-step process that begins with an alumina template containing tiny pores covered by an electrolyte containing monomer precursors. When an electrical potential is applied to the template, electrodes at the base of each pore attract the monomers and begin forming hollow nanofibers. The amount of current applied and the growth time control the length of the fibers and the thickness of their walls, while the pore size controls the diameter. Fiber diameters range from 18 to 300 nanometers, depending on the pore template.

After formation of the monomer chains, the nanofibers are cross-linked with an electropolymerization process, and the template removed. The resulting structure can be attached to electronic devices through the application of a liquid such as water or a solvent, which spreads the fibers and creates adhesion through capillary action and van der Waals forces.

“With the electrochemical polymerization processing approach that we took, we were able to align the chains of the polymer, and the template appears to prevent the chains from folding into crystals so the material remained amorphous,” Cola explained. “Even though our material is amorphous from a crystalline standpoint, the polymer chains are highly aligned – about 40 percent in some of our samples.”

Though the technique still requires further development and is not fully understood theoretically, Cola believes it could be scaled up for manufacturing and commercialization. The new material could allow reliable thermal interfaces as thin as three microns – compared to as much as 50 to 75 microns with conventional materials.

“There are some challenges with our solution, but the process is inherently scalable in a fashion similar to electroplating,” he said. “This material is well known for its other applications, but ours is a different use.”

Engineers have been searching for an improved thermal interface material that could help remove heat from electronic devices. The problem of removing heat has worsened as devices have gotten both smaller and more powerful.

Rather than pursue materials because of their high thermal conductivity, Cola and his collaborators investigated materials that could provide higher levels of contact in the interface. That’s because in some of the best thermal interface materials, less than one percent of the material was actually making contact.

“I stopped thinking so much about the thermal conductivity of the materials and started thinking about what kinds of materials make really good contact in an interface,” Cola said. He decided to pursue polythiophene materials after reading a paper describing a “gecko foot” application in which the material provided an estimated 80 percent contact.

Samples of the material have been tested to 200 degrees Celsius through 80 thermal cycles without any detectable difference in performance. While further work will be necessary to understand the mechanism, Cola believes the robustness results from adhesion of the polymer rather than a bonding.

“We can have contact without a permanent bond being formed,” he said. “It’s not permanent, so it has a built-in stress accommodation. It slides along and lets the stress from thermal cycling relax out.”

In addition to those already mentioned, co-authors of the paper included Professor Kenneth Sandhage, Research Scientist Ye Cai, Assistant Professor Asegun Henry and graduate assistant Wei Lv of Georgia Tech; Prof. Li Shi, Annie Weathers, Kedong Bi, Micheal T. Pettes and Sally McMenamin in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin; and Daniel P. Resler, Todd Gattuso and David Altman of the Raytheon Company.

A patent application has been filed on the material. Cola has formed a startup company, Carbice Nanotechnologies, to commercialize thermal interface technologies. It is a member of Georgia Tech’s VentureLab program.

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through award CBET-113071, a seed grant from the Georgia Tech Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics and an NSF-IGERT graduate fellowship. Any conclusions or opinions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the NSF.

CITATION: Virendra Singh, et al., “High thermal conductivity of chain-oriented amorphous polythiophene,” (Nature Nanotechnology, 2014). http://www.dx.doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2014.44

Research News
Georgia Institute of Technology
177 North Avenue
Atlanta, Georgia  30332-0181 USA

Media Relations Contacts: John Toon (404-894-6986) (jtoon@gatech.edu) or Brett Israel (404-385-1933) (brett.israel@comm.gatech.edu).

Writer: John Toon

• Thomas Bougher: Thermal Transport in Chain-oriented Amorphous Polymers
• Caroline Grand: Tuning Solubility of Isoindigo Polymers to Control Thin Film Morphology in Organic Photovoltaics
• Nabil Kleinhenz: Employing Liquid Crystal Phases for Enhanced Semiconducting Polymer Morphologies for Organic Solar Cell and Transistor Applications

• Keith Knauer: The Operational Lifetime of Inverted Top-Emitting Organic Light-Emitting Diodes

The students will present their reserch findings in the fall semester at the COPE Fellowship Awards Reception. 

Dr. Yee graduated with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering (2007) and then an M.S. in Nuclear Engineering (2008) from The Ohio State University. He was a Department of Energy Advanced Fuel Cell Cycle Initiative Fellow (2007) and was also awarded prestigious the Hertz Fellowship (2008) to support his research in energy. Dr. Yee graduated with a Ph.D. (2013) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California Berkley. During that time, he assisted in forming the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Project Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) as it’s first Fellow.

Now at Georgia Tech, Dr. Yee is focused on taking fundamental scientific principles, applying them to interesting materials, leveraging unique manufacturing strengths, and producing low-cost, scalable, energy conversion technologies.

For example, by understanding how heat and energy flow through materials, energy conversion mechanisms and processes can be integrated into functional devices. These devices include thermoelectric generators, solid-state coolers, pyroelectric converters, alpha- and beta-voltaics, multi-ferroic and -caloric systems, and photovoltaics. 

In the near-term, Dr. Yee is developing polymer thermoelectrics that leverage the low cost of conducting polymers to make scalable thermoelectric generators. This work is inherently interdisciplinary involving backgrounds in synthetic chemistry, polymer physics, condensed matter physics, soft-material science, and materials characterization.

According to Dr. Yee, “With >60% of primary energy being discarded as heat, inexpensive methods of converting heat directly to electricity allow for greater efficiency and utilization of energy resources. A polymer thermoelectric generator is one new technology that is capable of doing this at scale.”

Ultimately, Dr. Yee hopes to impact the world by creating new energy technologies and training the next generation of energy technologists and educators.  To do this, he mentors students at the intersection of technology, policy, and business where they prepare for careers in government as technology policists, in start-ups as technical executives, and in academia as professors.

A publication of SPIE, the Journal of Nanophotonics is an electronic journal that focuses on the fabrication and application of nano structures that facilitate the generation, propagation, manipulation, and detection of light from the infrared to the ultraviolet regimes. The scope of material that appears in the journal extends to theory, modeling and simulation, experimentation, instrumentation, and application.

Adibi holds the Joseph M. Pettit Professorship in Electronics and has been a member of the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering faculty since 2000. He leads the Photonics Research Group, where he and his team conduct research in the design, optimization, simulation, and fabrication of integrated photonic structures for optical sensing, optical communications, and optical signal processing. He has published more than 120 journal papers and more than 350 conference papers.

Adibi is a Fellow of SPIE, OSA, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has also received several of the nation’s most prestigious accolades, including the SPIE Technology Achievement Award, the Packard Fellowship, the PECASE Award, and an NSF CAREER Award. 

As a thank you to the people who have contributed and made the Center possible, Georgia Tech-COPE will be hosting a 10th Anniversary Symposium on March 14, 2014 at the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center.   

Keynote speakers: 

• Antoine Kahn (Princeton University), "Chemical Doping in Organic Semiconductors"
• Ching Tang (University of Rochester), "OLED - The Next Generation Display Technology"
• Valy Vardeny (University of Utah), "Organic Spintronics"
• Vivian Wing-Wah Yam (University of Hong Kong), "Versatile Chromophoric Building Blocks - From Design to Supramolecular Assembly and Materials"

View the Agenda.

Faculty, alumni, corporate and government partners, students, researchers and university administrators are all invited to participate. RSVP (required to attend) for the Symposium. 

Participants at Symposium have the opportunity to:

• Learn about cutting-edge research from world-renowned faculty members
• Learn about research and products being worked on at partner companies
• Meet top students and graduates who are prepared for the workforce
• Discuss emerging trends with recognized experts in the field
• Find knowledge and ideas to solve challenging problems
• Connect with global researchers and companies

The Symposium will take place at the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center. Lodging is available at teh Renaissance Atlanta Midtown Hotel or at nearby hotels. 

Below, GTRC’s Vice President of Research Jilda Garton talks about the Contract Continuum, a mechanism introduced by GTRC’s recently established Office of Industry Engagement to make it easier for industry and university researchers to engage at any point in the R&D process — from early-stage research to product launch.

Tell us about the Office of Industry Engagement.  
It was created by merging the functions of technology licensing, industry contracting, and international collaborations. Organized into three offices: Innovation Commercialization; Industry Collaborations and Affiliated Licenses; and International Contracts and Technology Transfer, Industry Engagement allows for better alignment of contract administration activities and intellectual property expertise. This synergy increases the efficiency of the negotiation process and expedites the time to contract.

Could you explain the Contract Continuum?  
The Contract Continuum is a collection of four research contracts: Basic Research, Applied Research, Demonstration, and Specialized Testing. These contracts simplify collaboration between Tech and industry — at all R&D stages — streamlining the contracting process for industry and for our researchers by providing appropriate terms and conditions upfront based upon the research needed. So, working with the principal investigator to determine the type of research to be performed as well as the facilities to be used, a contracting officer determines which of the four contracts in the Continuum is appropriate. In some cases, all four agreement types may be necessary; it just depends on the relationship with the sponsor and the outcome desired.

What makes the Contract Continuum attractive to industry?
Our established terms and conditions for intellectual property definitively address needs that industry has expressed about: having access to the intellectual property generated from the research; excluding competitors from access to that intellectual property — in the particular field of use — on a fair and reasonable basis; and incurring a financial risk that is reasonable. Additionally, our agreements align with industry’s R&D process.

Why should faculty be excited about the Contract Continuum?
It was designed to provide our researchers the greatest amount of flexibility in both the type of research that can be performed and the facilities that can be used for research. It allows the principal investigators to pursue transformative research that may not have otherwise taken place. While our industry partners are assured of intellectual property exclusivity, at the same time, we’ve preserved our opportunities for entrepreneurship in other fields of use. This is how, for instance, we have seen results from jet engine research lead to advances with cardiac devices.

Since the Contract Continuum was introduced in March, what benefits have you seen?
We’ve been able to efficiently finalize negotiations that, in the past, would have been protracted or not have materialized. In several recent negotiations, for example, Tech was able to quickly develop a coordinated agreement, allowing the sponsor and our researchers to engage in projects across different schools and GTRI — funded by different business units of the sponsor, and throughout the research spectrum — all without the need for legal review on a project-by-project basis.

What do faculty need to understand about efficiently using the Contract Continuum?
Even with its increased flexibility and transparency, the Continuum must still operate within the framework of Institute policies, state laws, and federal regulations. So, it’s extremely important for researchers to work with their contracting officer early in the proposal process. Industry Engagement offers informational courses for various stakeholders in the research process and will visit any school, department, or lab to provide an overview.

The two-year program’s interdisciplinary approach intersects science, law, and business and brings together Georgia Tech Ph.D. and M.B.A. students with law students from Emory University. The program is nationally recognized for its success at developing entrepreneurs. Teams are formed in the first semester and consist of one Ph.D., two MBA, and two law students. Up to seven new research students are accepted each year and the teams form around their doctoral projects. Sometimes the research is successfully commercialized; sometimes it is not.

ECE Ph.D. students Matthieu Leibovici and Amir Dindar, advised by Professor Tom Gaylord and Professor Bernard Kippelen, respectively, are currently enrolled in the TI:GER program. While they are at different stages in the program, both are reaping the rewards of TI:GER’s four-course academic track that provides instruction in technology commercialization processes with a focus on technology law and business fundamentals. An added benefit of the program is that many of the research students receive a two-year, half-time graduate research assistantship to cover their stipend and tuition waiver.

Matthieu Leibovici and his team are in the first semester of the program and are pursing the commercialization of pattern-integrated interference lithography (PIIL) technology, the subject of his graduate research currently developed in the GT Optics Laboratory. The lack of rapid and inexpensive fabrication techniques for periodic structures at the nano-scale has resulted in a significant roadblock to commercial development. PIIL addresses the limitations of multi-beam interference lithography by coupling it with projection lithography simultaneously. PIIL has far-reaching possibilities in areas such as optical communications, HD displays, solar cells, and biomedical devices, among others.

While Leibovici and his team hope to commercialize the technology and are currently seeking partners for development and licensing, he is quick to stress that TI:GER is not an incubator, but an education program. He says, “The goal is for Ph.D. students to gain business and legal skills in an environment of learning how to commercialize a technology, but you don’t ‘fail’ if you don’t launch a company.”

Second year TI:GER participant, Amir Dindar, is researching an ink-jet printed organic thin-film solar cell module for his electrical engineering doctoral degree. With this emerging technology, a solar cell module can be fabricated on top of glass as well as flexible substrates such as plastic. Low fabrication costs combined with applications that include futuristic new products such as bendable and disposable electronics had Dindar’s TI:GER team excited about taking the product to market.

The one downside of organic solar cells is low-efficiency compared to conventional cells. The team knew this was a hurdle, but as part of their coursework, they embarked on an extensive discovery phase that involved in-depth industry analysis, product concepting, and market segmentation. In the end, their research uncovered that the return on investment was too low to make the technology viable in the market—for now.

“We learned a valuable lesson through our analysis. In academia, you aren’t as concerned about the market, but in industry it often happens that your idea isn’t feasible. You have to either stop the project or change direction. TI:GER helped me pinpoint problems in my research and now I have the opportunity to solve them,” says Dindar.

The program, which was started in 2002 with funds from the National Science Foundation, provides a unique opportunity to ECE doctoral students. Adding an advantageous dimension to ECE curriculum, TI:GER teaches students to be both innovators and entrepreneurs. This duality is what academic institutions and industry are looking for in new hires.

Marie Thursby, Director of the TI:GER program says, “Programs like TI:GER give engineering students a competitive edge in the market. It’s not enough to just have the technical knowledge. Companies are looking for students with leadership skills and an understanding of what it takes to capitalize on technology.”

Interested students can plan to attend the information session on February 18, 2014. Please RSVP to Jennifer Jacobs by Feb. 17th. For more information, click here.

By taking advantage of the native pollen grain shape and a non-natural oxide chemistry, this work provides a unique demonstration of tunable, bio-enabled multimodal adhesion. The spikes inherited from the sunflower pollen provide short range adhesion – over nanoscale distances – while the oxide chemistry provides an adhesion mode that operates over much longer distances – up to one millimeter.

The work was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and has been accepted for publication in the journal Chemistry of Materials. A “just-accepted” version of the manuscript has appeared online.

“Pollen grains are inexpensive and sustainable templates that are readily available in large quantities,” said Ken Sandhage, a professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “Because pollen grains are already designed by nature for adhesion, we thought that it would be interesting to try to augment such natural behavior with an additional, non-natural mode of adhesion.”

Sandhage and graduate student Brandon Goodwin began by examining the microscopic shapes of several types of pollen – including ragweed, pecan and dandelion – before choosing particles from the sunflower (Helianthus annuus). The sunflower pollen grains are nearly spherical, but covered with spikes that can entangle with the hairs on bees’ legs, or adhere to surfaces via van der Waals forces at nanometer-scale distances, Sandhage explained.

The researchers washed the burr-like pollen particles with chloroform, methanol, hydrochloric acid and water to clean the surfaces and expose hydroxyl groups for chemically attaching their coating. They then applied iron oxide using an automated, layer-by-layer surface sol-gel process they had developed earlier for coating diatom shells made of silica. Reaction of the iron oxide precursor with the hydroxyl groups on the surface of the pollen particles resulted in a highly-conformal coatings.

The sol-gel process used alternating cycles of exposure to an iron (III) isopropoxide precursor solution and water to apply 30 thin layers of hematite (Fe₂O₃) onto the pollen. Heating the particles to 600 degrees Celsius then burned out the organic material from the original pollen grains and crystallized the iron oxide, leaving hollow 3D particles. The shells were then heated again in a controlled oxygen atmosphere to convert the hematite into magnetite (Fe₃O₄), which is more strongly magnetic.

“We examined individual pollen grains before and after firing, and we could see that the shape and surface features were well preserved,” said Sandhage, who is the B. Mifflin Hood Professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering. “The conformal nature of the coating process allowed us to generate ceramic replicas that retained even tiny surface features on the starting pollen grains.”

The adhesion properties of the magnetic pollen-shaped particles were then analyzed by graduate student Ismael Gomez and professor Carson Meredith, both from Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Gomez and Meredith used an atomic force microscope (AFM) tip to press the replicas onto a variety of surfaces, then measured the force required to remove them from the surfaces. They studied replica pollen adhesion to polyvinyl alcohol, polyvinyl acetate, polystyrene, silicon, nickel and neodymium-iron-boron – and compared the adhesion properties to those of the original sunflower pollen grains.

“We found that we achieved multimodal adhesion by retaining short-range van der Waals attraction, as exhibited by the native pollen, and gaining magnetic adhesion,” Sandhage said.

The layer-by-layer nature of the coating process allowed for control of the amount of magnetic material, and the magnetic properties of the pollen replicas. The researchers chose to apply 30 layers to achieve sufficient long-range magnetic behavior while retaining high-aspect-ratio, sharp spikes that provide for short-range van der Waals forces.

“Reproducibly generating large quantities of such cheap microparticles possessing high-aspect surface features over their entire particle surfaces would be quite challenging using synthetic top-down methods,” Sandhage said.

The Air Force Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) that funded the work is aimed at both understanding adhesion in natural systems and controllably tailoring such adhesion.  In future research supported by the MURI, Sandhage and Meredith plan to study other oxide materials and explore the variety of shapes available in pollen particles.

“Now that we know how to generate such particle replicas, there is certainly more chemical tailoring that we can explore for adhesion,” said Sandhage, who also holds an adjunct position in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemistry and Biochemistry.  “Through the proper combination of pollen shape, synthetic chemistry and thermal treatments, we can significantly expand the range of properties of these pollen replicas.”

This research was supported by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research through award number FA9550-10-1-0555. Any conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the U.S. Air Force.

CITATION: William Brandon Goodwin, Ismael J. Gomez, Carson Meredith and Kenneth H. Sandhage, “Conversion of Pollen Particles into Three-Dimensional Ceramic Replicas Tailored for Multimodal Adhesion.” (Chemistry of Materials, 2013): http:// dx.doi.org/10.1021/cm402226w

Research News
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Media Relations Contacts: John Toon (jtoon@gatech.edu)(404-894-6986) or Brett Israel (brett.israel@comm.gatech.edu)(404-385-1933).

Writer: John Toon

This article is one in a series of Q&As to introduce the Tech community to the nine IRIs and their leaders. In this installment, Acting Executive Director of the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEN) Oliver Brand answers questions about IEN and also talks about its efforts to support Georgia Tech faculty and students. 

Q:   The areas of electronics and nanotechnology encompass a vast number of research topics. How does IEN assist these research endeavors and bring together faculty, staff, and students?

A:   Indeed, electronics and nanotechnology are affecting many disciplines: from medicine and health care to sustainable energy production, from protecting the environment to protecting our country’s infrastructure, from consumer electronic devices to complex systems such as high-speed trains or airplanes, to name a few.

If we look at electronics and nanotechnology research today, we see that it requires a rather broad interdisciplinary approach, bringing together scientists and engineers from various disciplines across campus, as well as – depending on the application – medical personnel or researchers from public policy. We have recently assessed that approximately 25 percent of faculty members at Georgia Tech are involved in electronics and nanotechnology research in some manner.

IEN has several strategies to fuse such interdisciplinary research: First, IEN  supports nine research centers and programs that bring together faculty and students in more focused research areas, such as microelectromechanical systems, optoelectronics and photonics, photovoltaics, next generation semiconductors, devices and systems, high-frequency, broadband, mixed-signal electronic devices, circuits and systems, and micro- and nanoelectronics packaging. Second, IEN maintains state-of-the-art research laboratories in the Marcus Nanotechnology Building and the Pettit Microelectronics Research Building that host research groups from across campus. And, last but not least, IEN-sponsored events, such as the Nano@Tech seminar series, the NanoFANS forum, and an annual user research symposium, facilitate dissemination of on-campus research and stimulate discussion and collaboration.

Q:   Can you tell us a bit about IEN’s cleanroom facilities?

A:  Core facilities providing the necessary high-tech infrastructure are essential to research in the area of electronics and nanotechnology.

Many of the structures and devices that researchers investigate have micrometer or even nanometer dimensions and are often fabricated using complex instrumentation housed in exceptionally clean environments. These cleanrooms require substantial investments in infrastructure, highly skilled maintenance and management personnel, and round-the-clock monitoring.

Georgia Tech has always been a front-runner in this area and opened its first shared-user cleanroom in the Pettit Microelectronics Building in 1988. In 2009, the Marcus Nanotechnology Building opened, featuring a unique combination of inorganic and organic cleanrooms to facilitate research at the intersection of nanotechnology, biosciences, bioengineering, and medicine.

Today, our shared-user cleanrooms and laboratories host more than 200 fabrication and characterization tools, the largest shared-user toolset at any U.S. university. These tools are accessible to Georgia Tech students, researchers, and faculty – as well as to external academic and industry researchers at relatively low costs.

Additionally, IEN is part of the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN), a program supported by the National Science Foundation. NNIN’s goal is to provide broad access to fabrication and characterization facilities to promote nanoscale science, engineering, and technology. Almost 800 researchers, 600 from this campus and 200 from off campus, have used the IEN cleanrooms and labs in the past 12 months. Skilled IEN staff train new users and assist with processing and characterization needs.

Q: How does IEN support education and outreach?

A:  Most of the users of our cleanrooms are actually Georgia Tech graduate students who gain hands-on experience with techniques such as growing nanostructures in dedicated furnaces and imaging results using high-resolution electron microscopes.

IEN also supports several REU (research experience for undergraduates) programs during the summer that allow undergraduate students from across the U.S. to perform hands-on electronics and nanotechnology research. To support instructional activities, we maintain a special teaching cleanroom, which is used for micro/nanotechnology lab courses taught in three engineering schools: electrical and computer, mechanical, and chemical and biomolecular engineering.

Finally, IEN is the headquarters of the NNIN education and outreach office, which supports many programs targeting K-12 students, teachers, undergraduate and graduate students, and the general public.

Q:   What is on the horizon for IEN?

A:   The most imminent efforts are associated with the build-out of the Marcus Nanotechnology Building. Interdisciplinary research laboratories for biomedical devices, physical devices and systems, and nanomaterials, are either under construction or in the design phases. Additionally, construction is underway for a shared-user imaging and characterization suite in the basement of the Marcus Nanotechnology Building. Upon completion in 2014, this low vibration, low electromagnetic interference (EMI) facility will house a suite of high-resolution scanning and transmission electron microscopes, x-ray tomography systems, and surface characterization tools, as well as ion-beam-based nano-machining systems.

IEN has also initiated a research seed grant program for Georgia Tech faculty and students. The grantees are awarded blocks of access time to IEN cleanrooms to execute new ideas and generate initial results that may lead to funded proposal submissions. A semiannual submission, review, and award process is in place. The next round of grants will be offered in spring 2014.

Finally, IEN is participating in Tech’s efforts to develop an industry membership model, which will enable industry to more easily become familiar with Tech’s research activities in electronics and nanotechnology. The goals are to raise funds to seed new research ideas in a self-sustaining manner, and connect industry with students and faculty to jump-start funded research projects.

Q:   How does IEN connect commercial and government entities to campus faculty and resources and help streamline the collaboration or contracting processes.

A:  First, IEN staff serves on various campus councils where they work collaboratively with other Interdisciplinary Research Institutes and campus development staff. As a result, IEN has been able to develop a prioritized target list of companies needing assistance in the electronics and nanotechnology space. IEN staff then works to connect these companies with the faculty most aligned with their needs.

In addition, IEN works closely with Georgia Tech Research Corporation contracting officers and faculty, bridging the gap between academic and industry needs and accelerating the contracting process. IEN staff also assists faculty with the coordination and proposal writing process.

This year's Grand Prize is awarded to Keith Knauer and Ehsan Najafabadi for their video entitled, "Organic Light-Emitting Diodes (OLEDs)". The team is awarded the grand prize for receiving the highest overall score. Congratulations Keith and Ehsan!

Scores in the categories of research content and presentation were so close that all teams in this year's contest will share equally in the remaining prizes. The other teams receiving prizes are: 

• "Ordering of Semiconducting Polymers for Organic Electronics" Choi Dalsu, JiHwan Kang, Nabil Kleinhenz, Ashwin Ravisankar, Saujan Sivaram

• "Thermal Transport in Conjugated Polymer Nanotubes for Electronics Cooling" Thomas Bougher and Matthew Smith 

About the Georgia Tech–COPE Research Video Contest
The Georgia Tech–COPE Research Video Contest gives students involved in the field of organic photonics and electronics at Georgia Tech an opportunity to present their research and compete with other students.

Eligibility

• Graduate students with a Bachelor’s degree by the time the award begins.
• Applicants should have a superior academic record as demonstrated by a GPA of 3.5 or higher. Only students who have been at Georgia Tech for at least two years, and engaged in research for at least one year, are eligible to apply.
• Student supported will perform research in the field of Organic Photonics and Electronics and will present their research at the end of the year to the COPE community.
• You must be a COPE student member. However, we will accept your Fellowship Application as a consideration for COPE membership. Please review the benefits and responsibilities of being a COPE student member here.

Award
The award will provide a bonus of $5,000 to the current stipend the student has from his/her home department.

Deadline
The application deadline is November November 21, 2013.

A member of the ECE faculty since 2003, Kippelen conducts research ranging from the investigation of fundamental physical processes to the design, fabrication, and testing of lightweight flexible optoelectronic devices and circuits based on nanostructured organic materials.

Prior to joining Georgia Tech, Kippelen was on the faculty of the University of Arizona Optical Sciences Center from 1994-2003 and was a senior research lecturer with the French National Centre for Scientific Research from 1990-1994. He currently serves as the director of the Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics at Georgia Tech and is the associate director of CIS:HSEM, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

During his academic career, Kippelen has graduated 11 Ph.D. students and five master's students. He has also mentored a large number of undergraduate researchers, including 20 students at Tech, and 20 postdoctoral fellows. Kippelen is the co-author of 235 refereed publications and 12 book chapters, and he holds 15 patents. He is the president of the Lafayette Institute, a major optoelectronics commercialization initiative that is based at Georgia Tech-Lorraine in Metz, France. 

The research findings of Kippelen and his team have been the focus of many technical and popular press articles, with the most recent featuring the development of solar cells made from plants and trees. He is a Fellow of SPIE and OSA, a senior member of IEEE, and a member of the American Chemical Society, American Physical Society, and Materials Research Society.

But at nanometer-size scales for water and potentially other fluids, whether the container is made of glass or plastic does make a significant difference. A new study shows that in nanoscopic channels, the effective viscosity of water in channels made of glass can be twice as high as water in plastic channels. Nanoscopic glass channels can make water flow more like ketchup than ordinary H₂O.

The effect of container properties on the fluids they hold offers yet another example of surprising phenomena at the nanoscale. And it also provides a new factor that the designers of tiny mechanical systems must take into account.

“At the nanoscale, viscosity is no longer constant, so these results help redefine our understanding of fluid flow at this scale,” said Elisa Riedo, an associate professor in the School of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “Anyone performing an experiment, developing a technology or attempting to understand a biological process that involves water or another liquid at this size scale will now have to take the properties of surfaces into account.”

Those effects could be important to designers of devices such as high resolution 3D printers that use nanoscale nozzles, nanofluidic systems and even certain biomedical devices.

Considering that nano-confined water is ubiquitous in animal bodies, in rocks, and in nanotechnology, this new understanding could have a broad impact.

Research into the properties of liquids confined by different materials was sponsored by the Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Sciences and the National Science Foundation. The results were reported September 19 in the journal Nature Communications.

The viscosity differences created by container materials are directly affected by the degree to which the materials are either hydrophilic – which means they attract water – or hydrophobic – which means they repel it. The researchers believe that in hydrophilic materials, the attraction for water – a property known as “wettability” – makes water molecules more difficult to move, contributing to an increase in the fluid’s effective viscosity. On the other hand, water isn’t as attracted to hydrophobic materials, making the molecules easier to move and producing lower viscosity.

In research reported in the journal, this water behavior appeared only when water was confined to spaces of a few nanometers or less – the equivalent of just a few layers of water molecules.  The viscosity continued to increase as the surfaces were moved closer together.

The research team studied water confined by five different surfaces: mica, graphene oxide, silicon, diamond-like carbon, and graphite. Mica, used in the drilling industry, was the most hydrophilic of the materials, while graphite was the most hydrophobic.  

“We saw a clear one-to-one relationship between the degree to which the confining material was hydrophilic and the viscosity that we measured,” Riedo said.

Experimentally, the researchers began by preparing atomically-smooth surfaces of the materials, then placing highly-purified water onto them. Next, an AFM tip made of silicon was moved across the surfaces at varying heights until it made contact. The tip – about 40 nanometers in diameter – was then lifted up and the measurements continued.

As the viscosity of the water increased, the force needed to move the AFM tip also increased, causing it to twist slightly on the cantilever beam used to raise and lower the tip. Changes in this torsion angle were measured by a laser bounced off the reflective cantilever, providing an indication of changes in the force exerted on the tip, the viscous resistance exerted – and therefore the water’s effective viscosity.

“When the AFM tip was about one nanometer away from the surface, we began to see an increase of the viscous force acting on the tip for the hydrophilic surfaces,” Riedo said. “We had to use larger forces to move the tip at this point, and the closer we got to the surface, the more dramatic this became.”

Those differences can be explained by understanding how water behaves differently on different surfaces.

“At the nanoscale, liquid-surface interaction forces become important, particularly when the liquid molecules are confined in tiny spaces,” Riedo explained. “When the surfaces are hydrophilic, the water sticks to the surface and does not want to move. On hydrophobic surfaces, the water is slipping on the surfaces. With this study, not only have we observed this nanoscale wetting-dependent viscosity, but we have also been able to explain quantitatively the origin of the observed changes and relate them to boundary slip. This new understanding was able to explain previous unclear results of energy dissipation during dynamic AFM studies in water.”

While the researchers have so far only studied the effect of the material properties in water channels, Riedo expects to perform similar experiments on other fluids, including oils. Beyond simple fluids, she hopes to study complex fluids composed of nanoparticles in suspension to determine how the phenomenon changes with particle size and chemistry.

“There is no reason why this should not be true for other liquids, which means that this could redefine the way that fluid dynamics is understood at the nanoscale,” she said. “Every technology and natural process that uses liquids confined at the nanoscale will be affected.”

In addition to Riedo, co-authors of the paper included Deborah Ortiz-Young, Hsiang-Chih Chiu and Suenne Kim, who were at Georgia Tech when the research was done, and Kislon Voitchovsky of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland.

CITATION: Deborah Ortiz-Young, Hsiang-Chih Chiu, Suenne Kim, Kislon Voitchovsky and Elisa Riedo, “The interplay between apparent viscosity and wettability in nanoconfined water," (Nature Communications, 2013). http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130919/ncomms3482/full/ncomms3482.html

This research was supported by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under grant DE-FG02-06ER46293 and by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grants DMR-0120967, DMR-0706031 and CMMI-1100290. Any opinions or conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the DOE or NSF.

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Media Relations Assistance: John Toon (jtoon@gatech.edu)(404-894-6986) or Brett Israel (brett.israel@comm.gatech.edu)(404-385-1933)

Writer: John Toon

The image was created with an atomic force microscope and a process called ThermoChemical NanoLithography (TCNL). Going pixel by pixel, the Georgia Tech team positioned a heated cantilever at the substrate surface to create a series of confined nanoscale chemical reactions. By varying only the heat at each location, Ph.D. Candidate Keith Carroll controlled the number of new molecules that were created. The greater the heat, the greater the local concentration. More heat produced the lighter shades of gray, as seen on the Mini Lisa’s forehead and hands. Less heat produced the darker shades in her dress and hair seen when the molecular canvas is visualized using fluorescent dye. Each pixel is spaced by 125 nanometers.

“By tuning the temperature, our team manipulated chemical reactions to yield variations in the molecular concentrations on the nanoscale,” said Jennifer Curtis, an associate professor in the School of Physics and the study’s lead author. “The spatial confinement of these reactions provides the precision required to generate complex chemical images like the Mini Lisa.”

Production of chemical concentration gradients and variations on the sub-micrometer scale are difficult to achieve with other techniques, despite a wide range of applications the process could allow. The Georgia Tech TCNL research collaboration, which includes associate professor Elisa Riedo and Regents Professor Seth Marder, produced chemical gradients of amine groups, but expects that the process could be extended for use with other materials. 

“We envision TCNL will be capable of patterning gradients of other physical or chemical properties, such as conductivity of graphene,” Curtis said. “This technique should enable a wide range of previously inaccessible experiments and applications in fields as diverse as nanoelectronics, optoelectronics and bioengineering.”

Another advantage, according to Curtis, is that atomic force microscopes are fairly common and the thermal control is relatively straightforward, making the approach accessible to both academic and industrial laboratories.  To facilitate their vision of nano-manufacturing devices with TCNL, the Georgia Tech team has recently integrated nanoarrays of five thermal cantilevers to accelerate the pace of production. Because the technique provides high spatial resolutions at a speed faster than other existing methods, even with a single cantilever, Curtis is hopeful that TCNL will provide the option of nanoscale printing integrated with the fabrication of large quantities of surfaces or everyday materials whose dimensions are more than one billion times larger than the TCNL features themselves.

The paper, Fabricating Nanoscale Chemical Gradients with ThermoChemical NanoLithography, is published online by the journal Langmuir.

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation (PHYS-0849497, DMR-0120967, DMR-0820382 and CMMI-1100290). The findings and conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the NSF. This material is based upon work supported by the Department of Energy (Office of Basic Energy Services) under award number DE-FG02-06ER46293. This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof.

The technique could facilitate the use of nanoparticles for optical, electrical, optoelectronic, magnetic, catalysis and other applications in which tight control over size and structure is essential to obtaining desirable properties. The technique produces plain, core-shell and hollow nanoparticles that can be made soluble either in water or in organic solvents.

“We have developed a general strategy for making a large variety of nanoparticles in different size ranges, compositions and architectures,” said Zhiqun Lin, an associate professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “This very robust technique allows us to craft a wide range of nanoparticles that cannot be easily produced with any other approaches.”

The technique was described in the June issue of the journal Nature Nanotechnology. The research was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

The star-shaped block co-polymer structures consist of a central beta-cyclodextrin core to which multiple “arms” – as many as 21 linear block co-polymers – are covalently bonded. The star-shaped block co-polymers form the unimolecular micelles that serve as a reaction vessel and template for the formation of the nanocrystals.

The inner blocks of unimolecular micelles are poly(acrylic) acid (PAA), which is hydrophilic, which allows metal ions to enter them. Once inside the tiny reaction vessels made of PAA, the ions react with the PAA to form nanocrystals, which range in size from a few nanometers up to a few tens of nanometers. The size of the nanoparticles is determined by the length of the PAA chain.

The block co-polymer structures can be made with hydrophilic inner blocks and hydrophobic outer blocks – amphiphilic block co-polymers, with which the resulting nanoparticles can be dissolved in organic solvents. However, if both inner and outer blocks are hydrophilic – all hydrophilic block co-polymers – the resulting nanoparticles will be water-soluble, making them suitable for biomedical applications.

Lin and collaborators Xinchang Pang, Lei Zhao, Wei Han and Xukai Xin found that they could control the uniformity of the nanoparticles by varying the volume ratio of two solvents – dimethlformamide and benzyl alcohol – in which the nanoparticles are formed. For ferroelectric lead titanate (PbTiO₃) nanoparticles, for instance, a 9-to-1 solvent ratio produces the most uniform nanoparticles.

The researchers have also made iron oxide, zinc oxide, titanium oxide, cuprous oxide, cadmium selenide, barium titanate, gold, platinum and silver nanocrystals. The technique could be applicable to nearly all transition or main-group metal ions and organometallic ions, Lin said.

“The crystallinity of the nanoparticles we are able to create is the key to a lot of applications,” he added. “We need to make them with good crystalline structures so they will exhibit good physical properties.”

Earlier techniques for producing polymeric micelles with linear block co-polymers have been limited by the stability of the structures and by the consistency of the nanocrystals they produce, Lin said. Current fabrication techniques include organic solution-phase synthesis, thermolysis of organometallic precursors, sol-gel processes, hydrothermal reactions and biomimetic or dendrimer templating. These existing techniques often require stringent conditions, are difficult to generalize, include a complex series of steps, and can’t withstand changes in the environment around them.

By contrast, nanoparticle production technique developed by the Georgia Tech researchers is general and robust. The nanoparticles remain stable and homogeneous for long periods of time – as much as two years so far – with no precipitation. Such flexibility and stability could allow a range of practical applications, Lin said.

“Our star-like block co-polymers can overcome the thermodynamic instabilities of conventional linear block co-polymers,” he said. “The chain length of the inner PAA blocks dictates the size of the nanoparticles, and the uniformity of the nanoparticles is influenced by the solvents used in the system.”

The researchers have used a variety of star-like di-block and tri-block co-polymers as nanoreactors. Among them are poly(acrylic acid)-block-polystyrene (PAA-b-PS) and poly(acrylic acid)-blockpoly(ethylene oxide) (PAA-b-PEO) diblock co-polymers, and poly(4-vinylpyridine)-block-poly(tert-butyl acrylate)-block-polystyrene (P4VP-b-PtBA-b-PS), poly(4-vinylpyridine)-block-poly (tert-butyl acrylate)-block-poly(ethylene oxide) (P4VP-b-PtBA-b-PEO), polystyrene-block-poly(acrylic acid)-block-polystyrene (PS-b-PAA-b-PS) and polystyrene-block-poly(acrylic acid)-block-poly(ethylene oxide) (PS-b-PAA-b-PEO) tri-block co-polymers.

For the future, Lin envisions more complex nanocrystals with multifunctional shells and additional shapes, including nanorods and so-called “Janus” nanoparticles that are composed of biphasic geometry of two dissimilar materials.

This research was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) under awards FA9550-09-1-0388 and FA9550-13-1-0101. The conclusions expressed in this news releases are those of the principal investigator and do not necessarily represent the official views of the AFOSR.

CITATION: Xinchang Pang, Lei Zhao, Wei Han, Xukai Xin and Zhiqun Lin, “A general and robust strategy for the synthesis of nearly monodisperse colloidal nanocrystals,” (Nature Nanotechnology, 8, 426, 2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2013.85.

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Media Relations Contact: John Toon (jtoon@gatech.edu)(404-894-6986).
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Headquartered in Dresden, Germany, Novaled offers proprietary organic materials and complementary innovative technologies for superior OLEDs in display and lighting and for high performance Organic Solar Cells. In the field of organic electronics, Novaled’s expertise is unique in combining physics, chemistry, and engineering support.

When asked about joining the program, Dr. Jan Blochwitz-Nimoth, founder and CSO of Novaled stated, “COPE’s research track record qualifies them as one of the major organic electronic research centers in the world. It’s very impressive what an interdisciplinary team of researchers developed at GeorgiaTech.”

As a member of the program, Novaled will connect to the faculty expertise and highly trained student and graduates of the Center as well as an international network of partners in the field of organic photonics and electronics.  This includes information on the latest research and discoveries and invitations to exclusive events.

Dr. Jan Blochwitz-Nimoth added, “COPE’s work on organic electronic materials and related materials applications is a good match to Novaled’s expertise in these areas. We expect that this co-operation will help fuel our longer term strategic research agenda.”

Bernard Kippelen, Director of the Center stated, “COPE is extremely pleased to welcome Novaled in its Industrial Affiliates Program. As a major supplier of dopants for organic semiconductors and one of the leaders OLED technologies, Novaled brings a lot of experience to our center in commercializing new organic compounds and device architectures for printed and flexible electronics. We are looking forward to fruitful collaborations.”

Georgia Institute of Technology and Purdue University researchers have developed efficient solar cells using natural substrates derived from plants such as trees. Just as importantly, by fabricating them on cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) substrates, the solar cells can be quickly recycled in water at the end of their lifecycle.

The technology is published in the journal Scientific Reports, the latest open-access journal from the Nature Publishing Group.

The researchers report that the organic solar cells reach a power conversion efficiency of 2.7 percent, an unprecedented figure for cells on substrates derived from renewable raw materials. The CNC substrates on which the solar cells are fabricated are optically transparent, enabling light to pass through them before being absorbed by a very thin layer of an organic semiconductor. During the recycling process, the solar cells are simply immersed in water at room temperature. Within only minutes, the CNC substrate dissolves and the solar cell can be separated easily into its major components.

Georgia Tech College of Engineering Professor Bernard Kippelen led the study and says his team’s project opens the door for a truly recyclable, sustainable and renewable solar cell technology.

“The development and performance of organic substrates in solar technology continues to improve, providing engineers with a good indication of future applications,” said Kippelen, who is also the director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics (COPE). “But organic solar cells must be recyclable. Otherwise we are simply solving one problem, less dependence on fossil fuels, while creating another, a technology that produces energy from renewable sources but is not disposable at the end of its lifecycle.”

To date, organic solar cells have been typically fabricated on glass or plastic. Neither is easily recyclable, and petroleum-based substrates are not very eco-friendly. For instance, if cells fabricated on glass were to break during manufacturing or installation, the useless materials would be difficult to dispose of. Paper substrates are better for the environment, but have shown limited performance because of high surface roughness or porosity. However, cellulose nanomaterials made from wood are green, renewable and sustainable. The substrates have a low surface roughness of only about two nanometers.

“Our next steps will be to work toward improving the power conversion efficiency over 10 percent, levels similar to solar cells fabricated on glass or petroleum-based substrates,” said Kippelen. The group plans to achieve this by optimizing the optical properties of the solar cell’s electrode. "We will also coat these cells with an eco-friendly, thin environmental barrier coating to protect the cells from water and oxygen when operating in the field."

Purdue School of Materials Engineering associate professor Jeffrey Youngblood collaborated with Kippelen on the research.

A provisional patent on the technology has been filed with the U.S. Patent Office.

There’s also another positive impact of using natural products to create cellulose nanomaterials. The nation’s forest product industry projects that tens of millions of tons of them could be produced once large-scale production begins, potentially in the next five years. 

The research is the latest project by COPE, which studies the use and development of printed electronics. Last year the center created the first-ever completely plastic solar cell.

 This research was funded in part through the Center for Interface Science: Solar Electric Materials, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Award Number DE-SC0001084 (Y.Z., J.S., C.F., A.D.), by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Grant No. FA9550-09-1-0418) (J. H.), by the Office of Naval Research (Grant No. N00014-04-1-0313) (T.K., B.K.), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture –Forest Service (Grant No. 12-JV-11111122-098). Funding for CNC substrate processing was provided by USDA-Forest Service (Grant No. 11-JV-11111129-118) (R.J.M., J.P.Y., J.L.). The authors thank Rick Reiner and Alan Rudie from the U.S. Forest Service- Forest Products Laboratory (FPL) for providing CNC materials.

Congratulations, Jean-Luc!

“Selection as a fellow is an honor as it recognizes the extensive work and successes my research group has had in designing, synthesizing, characterizing and evaluating the properties of pi-conjugated polymers. We have developed these materials for color changing electrochromic, energy harvesting photovoltaic, charge storing supercapacitor and light-emitting applications,” said Reynolds.

 Reynolds has had a long and illustrious career. He came to Tech last spring from the University of Florida, where he was both a professor of chemistry and the associate director of the Center for Macromolecular Science and Engineering. Prior to that he was at the University of Texas at Arlington. He received his bachelor’s in chemistry at San Jose State University in 1979 and his master’s and doctorate in polymer science and engineering at the University of Massachusetts in 1982 and 1984, respectively.

Headquartered in Finland, Beneq’s North American offices are located in Duluth, Georgia. Beneq thin film equipment is used for coatings in solar photovoltaics, flexible electronics, strengthened glass and other emerging thin film applications. Beneq has introduced several revolutionary innovations within its coating technologies, including roll-to-roll atomic layer deposition (ALD) and high-yield atmospheric aerosol coating (nAERO®).

When asked about joining the program, Mr. Jukka Kohtala, Area Sales Director of Beneq states, “Joining the COPE is a natural step for Beneq, as we have for some time now been involved in developing the future coating equipment and applications for flexible and organic electronics, both on a purely R&D level and together with customers with real products. Especially our Roll-to-Roll approach is one that surely will interest the members and clientele of COPE."

As a member of the program, Beneq will connect to the faculty expertise and highly trained student and graduates of the Center as well as an international network of partners in the field of organic photonics and electronics.  This includes information on the latest research and discoveries and invitations to exclusive events.

Mr. Kohtala adds, “We are an innovative company with a unique coating technology, ready to accommodate partner and customer challenges, develop solutions and create new business. Organic electronics is a main focus area for us, and we know we have a lot to bring to COPE."

Prof. Bernard Kippelen, Director of the Center stated, “Partnerships with leading equipment manufacturers like Beneq are important to contribute to the future growth of the organic photonics and electronics industry. We are pleased to have Beneq as part of our network and are looking forward to productive interactions.” 

A summary of the awards are as follows:

• Best Product Development Award - Cambrios
• Best Commercialization Award - T-ink
• Best Technical Development Manufacturing Award - VTT Technical Research Center, Finland
• Best Technical Development Materials Award - Incubation Alliance Inc and Scrum Inc
• Academic R&D Award - Georgia Tech - Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics
• Best Poster - Prof. Fernando Seoane - University of Bora

"I'm honored to be numbered amongst those who've been recognized by the American Physical Society," said Bredas. "What I really appreciate about the Adler Lectureship Award is that it not only recognizes the research work, but also the ability to disseminate the findings to a wide audience through presentations at scientific meetings and through review articles that highlight the basic concepts."

The Adler award will be presented at the APS March 2013 meeting in Baltimore, MD, March 18-22, 2013, at a special Ceremonial Session.

http://www.aps.org/programs/honors/awards/adler.cfm

NextInput has developed force and pressure sensitive touch technologies based on MEMS sensors, an innovative new way of interacting with electronic devices. Their patent-pending technology provides a tactile, force or pressure sensitive method of interfacing with virtually any electronic device.

When asked about joining the program, Don Metzger, CEO of NextInput stated, “It represents an important step in NextInput’s mission to deliver the next generation of touch interfaces to the marketplace. Our research here is defining methods of human-machine interaction that have never been seen before.”

As a member of the program, NextInput will connect to the faculty expertise and highly trained student and graduates of the Center as well as an international network of partners in the field of organic photonics and electronics.  This includes information on the latest research and discoveries and invitations to exclusive events.

“We are delighted to participate in the COPE program at Georgia Tech,” added Don. “NextInput has a Georgia Tech heritage, and our team is very excited to explore groundbreaking organic-film based technologies with COPE’s team of faculty and scientists.”

Bernard Kippelen, Director of the Center stated, “The disruptive technologies that we invent within COPE in the area of printed electronics are a perfect fit for the new products and solutions that NextInput is developing. Transitioning our technology into technology companies is part of COPE’s mission and we are delighted to enter into this new partnership with NextInput.”

• Graduate students with a Bachelor’s degree by the time the award begins.
• Applicants should have a superior academic record as demonstrated by a GPA of 3.5 or higher. Only students who have been at Georgia Tech for at least two years, and engaged in research for at least one year, are eligible to apply.
• Student supported will perform research in the field of Organic Photonics and Electronics and will present their research at the end of the year to the COPE community.
• You must be a COPE student member. However, we will accept your Fellowship Application as a consideration for COPE membership. Please review the benefits and responsibilities of being a COPE student member here.

Award
The award will provide a bonus of $5,000 to the current stipend the student has from his/her home department.

Deadline
The application deadline is November November 21, 2012.

As a member of the program, Boeing will connect to the faculty expertise and highly trained students and graduates of the center as well as an international network of partners in the field of organic photonics and electronics. This includes information on the latest research and discoveries and invitations to exclusive events.

“We’ve joined this center to have access to the state of the art conductive and electro-active technology base that has been assembled at Georgia Tech,” said Patrick Kinlen of Boeing Research & Technology Materials, Processes & Structures Technologies. “This technology has impact for Boeing in the area of conductive coatings, photovoltaics, electrochromics and energy storage.”

“COPE is extremely pleased to count Boeing among its industrial affiliates,” said Bernard Kippelen, Georgia Tech director of the center. “Having a company with a long tradition of aerospace leadership and innovation like The Boeing Company join our center speaks for the strong potential that COPE’s technological innovations can have in the future of commercial jetliners, and in defense, space and security applications.”     

Boeing is the world’s largest aerospace company and leading manufacturer of commercial jetliners and defense, space and security systems. A top U.S. exporter, the company supports airlines and U.S. and allied government customers in 150 countries. Boeing products and tailored services include commercial and military aircraft, satellites, weapons, electronic and defense systems, launch systems, advanced information and communications systems, and performance-based logistics and training.

Boeing Research & Technology is the advanced, central research and development organization of Boeing. It provides innovative technologies that enable the development of future aerospace solutions while improving the cycle time, cost, quality and performance of current aerospace products and services. 

However, a new study by a team of researchers from the University of Groningen and the Georgia Institute of Technology reveals a common mechanism underlying these traps and provides a theoretical framework to design trap-free plastic electronics. The results are presented in an advance online publication of the journal Nature Materials.

Plastic semiconductors are made from organic, carbon-based polymers, comprising a tunable forbidden energy gap. In a plastic light-emitting diode (LED), an electron current is injected into a higher molecular orbital, situated just above the energy gap. After injection, the electrons move toward the middle of the LED and fall down in energy across the forbidden energy gap, converting the energy loss into photons. As a result, an electrical current is converted into visible light.

However, during their passage through the semiconductor, a lot of electrons get stuck in traps in the material and can no longer be converted into light. In addition, this trapping process greatly reduces the electron current and moves the location where electrons are converted into photons away from the center of the device.

“This reduces the amount of light the diode can produce,” explained Herman Nicolai, first author of the Nature Materials paper.

The traps are poorly understood, and it has been suggested that they are caused by kinks in the polymer chains or impurities in the material.

“We’ve set out to solve this puzzle by comparing the properties of these traps in nine different polymers,” Nicolai explained. “The comparison revealed that the traps in all materials had a very similar energy level.”

The Georgia Tech group, led by Professor Jean-Luc Bredas in the School of Chemistry & Biochemistry, investigated computationally the electronic structure of a wide range of possible traps. “What we found out from the calculations is that the energy level of the traps measured experimentally matches that produced by a water-oxygen complex,” said Bredas.

Nicolai explains that “such a complex could easily be introduced during the manufacturing of the semiconductor material, even if this is done under controlled conditions.” The devices Nicolai studied were fabricated in a nitrogen atmosphere, “but this cannot prevent contamination with minute quantities of oxygen and water,” he noted.

The fact that the traps have a similar energy level means that it is now possible to estimate the expected electron current in different plastic materials. And it also points the way to trap-free materials. “The trap energy lies in the forbidden energy gap,” Nicolai explained.

This energy gap represents the difference in energy of the outer shell in which the electrons circle in their ground state and the higher orbital to which they can be moved to become mobile charge carriers. When such a mobile electron runs into a trap that is within the energy gap it will fall in, because the trap has a lower energy level.

“But if chemists could design semiconducting polymers in which the trap energy is above that of the higher orbital in which the electrons move through the material, they couldn’t fall in,” he suggested. “In this case, the energy level of the trap would be higher than that of the electron.”

The results of this study are therefore important for both plastic LEDs and plastic solar cells. “In both cases, the electron current should not be hindered by charge trapping. With our results, more efficient designs can be made,” Nicolai concluded.

The experimental work for this study was done in the Zernike Institute of Advanced Materials (ZIAM) at the faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Groningen, the Netherlands. The theoretical work to identify the nature of the trap was carried out at the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA.

The work at the University of Groningen was supported by the European Commission under contract FP7-13708 (AEVIOM). The work at Georgia Tech was supported by the MRSEC program of the National Science Foundation under award number DMR-0819885.

Citation: H. T. Nicolai1, M. Kuik1, G. A. H.Wetzelaer1, B. de Boer1, C. Campbell2, C. Risko2, J. L. Brédas2,4 and P.W. M. Blom1,3* Unification of trap-limited electron transport in semiconducting polymers. Nature Materials, published online: 29 July 2012 | DOI: 10.1038/NMAT3384

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Media Relations Contact: John Toon (404-894-6986)(jtoon@gatech.edu).

Technical Contacts: Herman Nicolai (hermannicolai@gmail.com) or Jean-Luc Bedas (jean-luc.bredas@chemistry.gatech.edu).

This year, eleven women will receive the honor and will be recognized at the 2013 IUPAC Congress in early August 2013 in Istanbul, Turkey. Recipients come from all over the world, including Spain, Russia, Japan, South Africa, and more. 

Initiated in 2011 as part of the International Year of Chemistry, the award acknowledges and promotes the work of women chemists and chemical engineers worldwide. Awardees are selected based on excellence in basic or applied research, distinguished accomplishments in teaching or education, or demonstrated leadership or managerial excellence in the chemical sciences.

Plextronics Inc., an international technology company that specializes in printed solar, lighting and other electronics and headquartered in Pittsburgh served as host and organized the event along with Solvay and the Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics (COPE) at Georgia Tech. 

On the evening of May 9th Plextronics invited all symposium participants to a pre-conference reception coupled with laboratory tours of their facilities.  Attendees got a jump-start on networking with their peers, while getting a first-hand look at some of the equipment where Plextronics develops their suite of products that were on display during the reception.  

The next morning, symposium attendees arrived at the Sheraton Station Square hotel in downtown Pittsburgh, where the technical portion of the symposium took place.  The day started with welcoming addresses from Bernard Kippelen (Director of the Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics at Georgia Tech), Pierre Barthélemy (Solvay, Senior Vice President – Organic Electronics), and Andrew Hannah (CEO, Plextronics).

During day one attendees heard presentations from Richard McCullough (Carnegie Mellon University), Kieran Reynolds (Eight19), Marie-Beatrice Madec (Solvay Interox), Zhenan Bao (Stanford University), Mike Hack (Universal Display Corporation), Gopalan Rajeswaran (Moser Baer Technologies), Natalie Stingelin (Imperial College London), Christer Karlsson (Thin Film Electronics), John Reynolds (Georgia Tech), and Antonio Facchetti (Polyera). 

The day was capped with researchers and graduate students from Carnegie Mellon University, University of Pittsburgh, Georgia Tech, and Solvay presenting their latest research during the traditional poster session and reception.

Day two featured presentations from David Bucknall (Georgia Tech), Vincent Thulliez (Solvay), Andrew Hannah (Plextronics), Larry Hough (Rhodia: Member of the Solvay Group), and Tobin Marks (Northwestern University).  The day concluded with a panel discussion where industry speakers fielded questions from attendees and highlighted by discussion about the future prospects for the industry. 

Stay tuned for announcements on next year’s symposium at http://www.cope.gatech.edu or on twitter @gtcope. 

Cambridge NanoTech delivers ALD systems capable of depositing ultra-thin films that are used in a wide variety of research and industrial applications. As a member of the program, Cambridge NanoTech will connect to the faculty expertise and highly trained student and graduates of the Center as well as an international network of industrial partners in the field of organic photonics and electronics.  This includes access to the latest research and discoveries in this emerging field.

“By approaching material science development through the use of fundamental techniques such as Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD), scientists and engineers are able to improve device performance and produce novel applications” explained Ganesh Sundaram, Vice President of Technology at Cambridge NanoTech. “ALD is capable of depositing flexible, multi-functional materials at low deposition temperatures, which is ideal when integrating these materials into organic electronics and photonics.”

Cambridge NanoTech first introduced ALD systems nine years ago and has an install base of over 300 systems on six continents. Cambridge NanoTech’s ALD systems have become an important strategic solution for researchers and manufacturers that require highly conformal and uniform thin film oxides, nitrides, sulfides, and metals.

Dr. Sundaram added “Unquestionably, organic electronics and photonics is an emerging field that is rapidly growing and we are excited to join the Industrial Affiliates Program so that we can participate in finding applications that meld the areas of ALD and organic science.”

Bernard Kippelen, Director of the Center stated, “Our Center has pioneered the use of ALD in organic field-effect transistors and has been able to achieve excellent stability in such devices using a Cambridge NanoTech ALD system. We are looking forward to this strategic partnership to continue to advance the science and engineering of ALD and broaden its application spectrum.”    

Although this emerging technology is expected to grow by tens of billions of dollars over the next 10 years, one challenge is in manufacturing at low cost in ambient conditions. In order to create light or energy by injecting or collecting electrons, printed electronics require conductors, usually calcium, magnesium or lithium, with a low-work function. These metals are chemically very reactive. They oxidize and stop working if exposed to oxygen and moisture. This is why electronics in solar cells and TVs, for example, must be covered with a rigid, thick barrier such as glass or expensive encapsulation layers.

However, in new findings published in the journal Science, Georgia Tech researchers have introduced what appears to be a universal technique to reduce the work function of a conductor. They spread a very thin layer of a polymer, approximately one to 10 nanometers thick, on the conductor’s surface to create a strong surface dipole. The interaction turns air-stable conductors into efficient, low-work function electrodes.

The commercially available polymers can be easily processed from dilute solutions in solvents such as water and methoxyethanol.

“These polymers are inexpensive, environmentally friendly and compatible with existent roll-to-roll mass production techniques,” said Bernard Kippelen, director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics (COPE). “Replacing the reactive metals with stable conductors, including conducting polymers, completely changes the requirements of how electronics are manufactured and protected. Their use can pave the way for lower cost and more flexible devices.”

To illustrate the new method, Kippelen and his peers evaluated the polymers’ performance in organic thin-film transistors and OLEDs. They’ve also built a prototype: the first-ever, completely plastic solar cell.

“The polymer modifier reduces the work function in a wide range of conductors, including silver, gold and aluminum,” noted Seth Marder, associate director of COPE and professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. “The process is also effective in transparent metal-oxides and graphene.”

COPE is a collaborative effort of Georgia Tech professors in the Colleges of Engineering, Sciences and the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. The center is working on the next generation of electronic devices in order to save energy, reduce costs, increase national security and enhance the quality of the environment. Researchers from the groups of Georgia Tech professors Jean-Luc Brédas and Samuel Graham, as well as Princeton University Professor Antoine Kahn, also contributed to the new study.

The research was funded in part through the Center for Interface Science: Solar Electric Materials, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Award Number DE-SC0001084, by the STC Program MDITR of the National Science Foundation under Agreement No. DMR-0120967, and by the Office of Naval Research (Grant No. N00014-04-1-0120). The content is solely the responsibility of the principal investigators and does not necessarily represent the official views of the DOE, NSF and ONR.

Thin Film Electronics, PARC, Western Michigan University, and the Georgia Institute of Technology Receive Honors in Innovation, R&D, and Technology Leadership in Education.

The Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics (COPE) at the Georgia Institute of Technology was the recipient of the Technology Leadership in Education Award. This award recognizes and honors outstanding contributions to the flexible and printed electronics industry through education.  Judging was based on the quality of education, practical applicability, number of students completing the course, and degree of focus on flexible, printed electronics.

Full article from PR Newswire

The ESTeP promotes understanding at all levels of policy decision-making about those issues that affect the well-being of the optical science and engineering communities worldwide. This committee also advises the SPIE Board and other Society groups on ways to expand the Society's role in science and engineering policy. Founded in 1955 and with current membership of more than 180,000 constituents in more than 170 countries, SPIE advances an interdisciplinary approach to the science and application of light.

The awards recognize Georgia Tech researchers andteams whose work has transformed their disciplines, transformed teaching andresearch, and made significant contributions to industry in Georgia and thenation. These recipients exemplify innovative thought, research excellence, andcommitment to the motto on Georgia Tech's Seal, "Progress andService." 

Among a number of awards presented during thecelebration, The Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics was awarded the MaterialsAward that recognizes a Georgia Tech researcher or research group thathas successfully established strong research relationships with industry andmade significant advances in materials science leading to strong industrycollaborations, technology transfer, and commercialization of new technologies.  

Dr. Reynolds will be joining the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics in January of 2012.

Dr. Reynolds comes from the University of Florida, where he has built an internationally recognized program in the synthesis of materials for organic electronics. He will be affiliated with the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the School and Materials Science and Engineering.