The
AT&T Tech Channel discusses Plasmonics with Harry
Atwater, Howard Hughes Professor and Professor
of Applied Physics and Materials Science. New
research in Plasmonics promises breakthroughs with implications
ranging from the creation of faster than light computing,
possible new weapons against cancer, and maybe even achieving
invisibility. Video
clip...
The
NRG 0.1 lecture series, organized by Caltech's Energy Advisory
Committee, will take place in Baxter Lecture Hall on Fridays
from 2-3 p.m. through mid February. The first speaker, on
October 5th, will be former Caltech professor/Provost and
current Chief Scientist of BP, Steve Koonin, giving a broad
overview of the global energy challenge. Future speakers
include Sossina Haile, Professor of Materials Science and
Chemical Engineering, Harry
Atwater, Professor of Applied
Physics and Materials Science, and Jared
Leadbetter, Associate
Professor of Environmental Microbiology.
Julia
R. Greer has joined the EAS Division as Assistant Professor
of Materials Science. Her research areas are in mechanical
deformation and materials characterization at the nanoscale.
In the online journal Science
Express, Caltech applied physicists Harry
Atwater, Henri Lezec, and Jen Dionne report that they
have devised a way to make visible light travel in the opposite
direction that it normally bends when passing from one material
to another, like from air through water or glass. This could
lead to "cloaking devices" that may render an object
invisible.
Harry
Atwater, Howard Hughes Professor and Professor of Applied
Physics and Materials Science, has authored the cover article
of Scientific American (April 2007) with his article "The
Promise of Plasmonics." Read
more...
The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
has awarded Caltech $6.5 million to found CCSER,
the Center for Sustainable Energy Research. Read
more...
NSF has awarded $11.97 million
for Distributed Data Analysis for Neutron Scattering Experiments
(DANSE). The project is led by Brent
Fultz, Professor of Materials Science and Applied Physics,
with co-principal investigators Michael
A. G. Aivazis and Ian S. Anderson. This work is aimed at
designing new materials for a huge variety of applications
in transportation, construction, electronics, and space exploration. Read
more...
Caltech has teamed up with the energy company BP to look for
better and cheaper ways of producing solar cells.The Caltech
solar nanorod program will be directed by Nate Lewis, the George
L. Argyros Professor and Professor of Chemistry, and Harry
Atwater, the Howard Hughes Professor and Professor of Applied
Physics and Materials Science. Atwater's group will investigate
ways of creating silicon-based single-junction and compound
semiconductor-multijunction nanorod solar cells using vapor-deposition
synthesis methods that are scalable to very large areas. Read
more...
Graduate student Robert
Walters and Professor Harry
Atwater report in the current Nature
Materials on the first light-emitting transistor
to be entirely based on silicon. Although bulk silicon
is a poor light emitter, when it is in the form of isolated
crystals of just a few nanometres in diameter; its ability
to emit light improves significantly. By incorporating
these nanocrystals into a conventional silicon transistor,
and applying an alternating voltage, the transistor can
be made to light up. The ability to generate light in
an all-silicon device opens a range of new possibilities
in the field of optoelectronics. Field effect electroluminescence
is a new conceptual approach to carrier injection in
nanocrystal-based light emitting devices, and represents
a significant advance in the search for an efficient
silicon light source, one of the perennial "holy grails" of
microphotonics.
Professor Sossina Haile and
colleagues have created a propane-burning
fuel cell that's almost as small as a watch battery,
yet many times higher in power density. The team reports
in the June 9 issue of the journal Nature that two of the
cells have sufficient power to drive an MP3 player. If commercialized,
such a fuel cell would have the advantage of driving the
MP3 player for far longer than the best lithium batteries
available.
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) has selected
Professors Kaushik
Bhattacharya and Guruswami
Ravichandran as the recipients of the 2004 Best Paper Award
in the area of active materials. The paper selected is "Large
Electrostrictive Actuation of Barium Titanate Single Crystals".
Professor Sossina Haile and
colleagues, including postdoctoral scholar Zongping Shao, have
definitively solved a key problem in bringing
fuel cells closer to practical widespread use. Their new
cathode material, "BSCF", brings the operating temperature
down to the relatively cool range of 1100 deg F, while achieving
more power output than others are achieving at the higher temperatures--about
1 watt per square centimeter of fuel cell area.
"Bubbloy" is
a new springy foamed metal recently invented by Caltech doctoral
students Chris Veazey and Greg Welsh in the lab of Professor William
Johnson. This reincarnation of a bulk metallic glass has
the stiffness of metal but the springiness of a trampoline.
Bubbloy is one of several advances that was showcased at the
September 15 conference Materials
at the Fore, the third annual meeting of the Center
for the Science and Engineering of Materials at Caltech.
Presentations included "Nano-scale Mechanical Properties," by
Moore Distinguished Scholar Subra Suresh; "Thermoelectric
Devices," by Professor Sossina
Haile.
William
Johnson, the Ruben & Donna Mettler Professor of Engineering & Applied
Science, has been selected as a Fellow of the American
Society of Metals for the invention of bulk metallic-glass-forming
alloys and for the development of bulk metallic glasses as
structural materials. In addition, the Minerals,
Metals & Materials Society (TMS) has selected Professor
Johnson to give the Institute of Metals Lecture and receive
the Robert Franklin Mehl Award.
Center for Structural and Amorphous Metals (CCSAM) was initiated
in May 2001 as part of a broader SAM program sponsored by the Defense
Sciences Office of DARPA.
Mike Manley, who received his Ph.D. degree in Materials Science
from Caltech in 2001, has been named the recipient of the 18th
Louis Rosen Prize of the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center
(LANSCE).
Inelastic
Neutron Scattering at the Spallation
Neutron Source
The DoE recently announced grants totalling $10.9 million
for energy-efficient science research, an estimated $406,559
of which will go to Professor Sossina
Haile to develop new proton conducting materials for fuel
cells with higher chemical stability that improve energy efficiency...
Center for Ferroelectric
Engineering at Caltech - Caltech has been awarded a Multi-disciplinary
University Research Initiative on "Multiscale modeling
and process optimization for engineered microstructural complexity" for
$5,390,538 over five years beginning June 1, 2001. This initiative
will focus on the use of appropriate theory and targeted
experimentation as a tool for development of complex materials
and materials systems. It will use ferroelectric materials
and their application in microactuation as a case study.
The program will be managed by the Army
Research Office, and involves nine investigators in Caltech: K.
Bhattacharya (PI), H.A.
Atwater, W.A.
Goddard, D.G.
Goodwin, S.M. Haile, R.M.
Murray, M.
Ortiz, G.
Ravichandran and T. Cagin.
On December 1, 2001, the American Ceramic Society selected Sossina
Haile to receive the 2001 Robert L. Coble Award for young
scholars. The award honors the late Professor Coble whose
enthusiasm and creative energy were directed toward putting
the field of ceramics on a sound scientific foundation. Professor
Coble's lifelong mission was to enhance the achievement and
advancement of young ceramic scientists. This award recognizes
an outstanding scientist who is conducting research in academia,
industry or a government-funded laboratory. Candidates must
be ACerS members at the time of nomination and must be 35
years of age or younger as of the Annual Meeting.
Caltech, Agere Systems scientists develop technique to shrink
memory chips. New
flash memory uses nanoparticles.
NSF
awards $9.6 million for materials research center at Caltech.
Professor Sossina M. Haile has
been selected for the Electrochemical Society High Temperature
Materials Divison J. Bruce Wagner, Jr. Young Investigator Award.
The criteria for the award is that the nominee should be no
more than 36 years old on Jan 15, 2001, be an ECS member for
2 or more years, and have shown exceptional promise for a successful
career in the field of high temperature materials. The award
consists of $1000 and financial assistance to present a keynote
talk at the Fall 2001 ECS Meeting in San Francisco. More details
about this meeting can be found at: www.electrochem.org under
meetings.
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