MSE News

Brian Smith, MSE '01, wins Wharton Business Plan Competition

The Wharton Business Plan Competition has announced that student team Solixia won the $20,000 grand prize as part of the annual Wharton Venture Finals. Solixia co-founders Brian Smith, PhD and Irene Susantio, Wharton MBA second year student, created a “Hot Dot” cancer treatment that they say is 20 times more powerful in diagnosing and treating cancer than present treatments. 

read more: PennCurrent

Campbell Laird receives TMS Fellow - Class of 2008 Award.

Campbell Laird received the Fellow - Class of 2008 Award from The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS) at their annual meeting in New Orleans. The honorary class of Fellow is the highest honor bestowed by TMS. To be inducted, a candidate must be recognized as an eminent authority and contributor within the broad field of metallurgy.The maximum number of living Fellows is 100. Campbell was honored for "his discovery of the mechanism of fatigue crack propagation and for pioneering studies of stress-strain response and general fatigue behavior".

Ritesh Agarwal: Top 5 Biggest Advances in Nanoscience

MIT's Technology Review has named Ritesh Agarwal's work on nanowire phase change materials as one of the Top 5 Biggest Advances in Nanoscience in 2007. His work involved novel approaches to storing data that could lead to memory chips as much as a hundred times more compact than today's devices.

http://www.technologyreview.com/Nanotech/19983/

Penn Engineers Design Electronic Computer Memory in Nanoscale Form That Retrieves Data 1,000 Times Faster

Ritesh Agarwal and colleagues have developed nanowires capable of storing computer data for 100,000 years and retrieving that data a thousand times faster than existing portable memory devices such as Flash memory and micro-drives, all using less power and space than current memory.   The self-assembling nanowire of germanium antimony telluride is a phase-changing material that switches between amorphous and crystalline structures, the key to read/write computer memory.  Fabrication of the nanoscale devices, roughly 100 atoms in diameter, was performed without conventional lithography, the blunt, top-down manufacturing process that employs strong chemicals and often produces unusable materials with space, size and efficiency limitations.  The findings appear in the October print edition of Nature Nanotechnology.

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Landmark Modeling Study at Penn Reveals How Ferroelectric Computer Memory Works\n

A collaboration between Dr. Andrew Rappe (Dept. of Chemistry) and I-Wei Chen (MSE) involving multi-scale modeling of ferroelectric domain walls, has provided a new theory of behavior for domain-wall motion, the "sliding wall" that separates ferroelectric domains and makes high-density ferroelectric RAM (FeRAM) possible. The new theory confirms experimental data long at odds with existing theories of domain-wall behavior.  Most notable is the simulations reproduced experimental domain growth rates and revealed small, square critical nuclei with a diffuse interface.  Small dipoles were found to play a key role in smoothing the transition between up and down regions as the wall moves.  Scaling up, their model showed how millions of atoms in a ferroelectric material respond collectively to a domain wall, extending their theoretical view to the micron and millisecond.  The study appears in the Oct. 18 print edition of the journal Nature.

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“Heftier” Atoms Reduce Friction at the Nanoscale

A research team led by Robert Carpick has discovered that friction between two sliding bodies can be reduced at the molecular, or nanoscale, level by changing the mass of the atoms at the surface.  Heavier atoms vibrate at a lower frequency, reducing energy lost during sliding.  Along with colleagues at the University of Houston and the University of Wisconsin now at IBMs Zurich Research Laboratory and the U. S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, Rob measured the force of friction on single-crystal diamond and silicon coated single layers of hydrogen and deuterium atoms. The larger atomic mass of deuterium results in a lower natural vibration frequency of the atoms; these atoms collide less frequently with the tip sliding over it, and thus energy is more slowly dissipated away from the contact. The Penn findings provide a better understanding of the nature of friction, which lacks a comprehensive model at the fundamental level, and appear in the November issue of the journal Science.

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Robert W. Carpick Named Director of Penn's Nanotechnology Institute

Robert Carpick has been appointed Penn Director of the Nanotechnology Institute. He replaces former Penn faculty member David Luzzi, founding investigator of the Institute and now dean of engineering at Northeastern University. Carpick will serve as principal investigator and coordinate Penn's engagement with the Nanotechnology Institute going forward.  The Nanotechnology Institute is a regional academic research and technology commercialization collaboration made possible by support from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  The Institute was founded in 2001 by Penn, Drexel and the Benjamin Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania.

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Nanochessboards: natural “workbench” for nanoscale construction

Beth Guiton and Peter Davies have taken a step toward simplifying the creation of nanostructures by identifying the first inorganic material to phase separate with near-perfect order at the nanometer scale. The finding provides an atomically tuneable nanocomposite “workbench” that is cheap and easy to produce and provides a super-lattice foundation potentially suitable for building nanostructures.  The lattice image of (Nd2/3-xLi3x)TiO3 exhibits two distinct patterns at the atomic scale with identical periodicity: a nanoscale chessboard pattern and a diamond pattern that indicated periodic separation into two phases within the structure.  The findings appear in the August 2007 issue of Nature Materials. (http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/article.php?id=1189)

MSE’s Newest Faculty Appointment: Dr Ju Li

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Ju Li as Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering.  Dr. Li joins us from the Ohio State University.  He is a world leader in the theory and modeling of materials and his interests range from size-dependent plasticity in nanoscale materials and growth mechanisms of nanowires, through charge transport in molecular optoelectronics, to cellular ultrastructure and cytoskeletal dynamics.  In 2006 Dr. Li received the Outstanding Young Investigator Award from the Materials Research Society for his “innovative work on the atomistic and first principles modeling of nanoindentation and ideal strength in revealing the genesis of materials deformation and fracture”.  He was also selected as one of the 2007 Young Innovators by Technology Review.   Dr Li will join the department in October 2007.

Seeking the Next Kevlar: Penn Researchers Fine Tune Nanotube/Nylon Composite Using Carbon Spacers

In collaboration with Rice University researchers, Karen Winey’s group have added a significant new step to the creation of materials fortified by single-walled carbon nanotubes, or SWNTs, resulting in a nylon polymer composite with greater strength and toughness and opening the door for researchers to broadly improve the mechanical properties of such composites at the molecular level. (http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/article.php?id=1132)

David Luzzi appointed Dean of Engineering at Northeastern University

After serving on the faculty for 20 years, David Luzzi will be leaving Penn for to assume the position of Dean of Engineering at Northeastern University.

Ritesh Agarwal Receives 2007 NSF Career Award

Ritesh Agarwal, has received the 2007 Faculty Early Career Award from the National Science Foundation. The award is the most competitive and prestigious award from NSF to young faculty members in all science and engineering fields and places emphasis on high-quality research and novel education initiatives. Ritesh's proposed research focused on the synthesis and optical properties of self-assembled nanowire heterostructure materials ranging from molecular to microscopic length scales.

MSE Appoints Two New Senior Faculty
We are delighted to announce the appointment of two new senior faculty who will be arriving on campus in January 2007: Dr. Christopher B. Murray and Dr. Cherie Kagan.

Dr. Murray is currently the manager and strategic leader of the Nanoscale Materials and Devices department at IBM research. He is a world leader in the field of nanotechnology; his seminal contributions in this area include the creation of artificial atoms (nanocrystals or quantum dots) that self assemble into devices with completely new multi-functionalities. Dr Murray will hold a joint appointment between Materials Science and Engineering and Chemistry as the "Richard Perry University Professor" one of President Gutmann's "Penn Integrates Knowledge" professorships.

Dr. Kagan also joins us from IBM where she is currently manager of the Molecular Assemblies and Devices Group. She is an international leader in the field of organic and molecular electronics. Cherie's many contributions include the development of hybrid inorganic/organic transistors, and the rational design and fabrication of molecular electronic structures. Dr. Kagan is an alum of our department and will have appointments in Electrical and Systems Engineering and in MSE.

>> Read Press Release >>

 
Dr. Robert Carpick new appointment in MEAM and MSE

Dr. Robert Carpick will be joining the Department of Mechanical Engineering in January 2007 and will hold an appointment in MSE. Dr. Carpick joins us from the University of Wisconsin. He is internationally recognized for his research on the quantitative application of advanced scanning microscopy to the measurement of friction and nanotribology, in materials such as diamond thin films, textured polymers, self assembled organic monolayers and nanostructured materials. His research is particularly relevant in understanding surface-dominated forces such as friction and adhesion for micro- and nano-scale devices, for example micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), which possess a large surface-to-volume ratio.

Vasek Vitek elected to the National Academy of Engineering
Vasek Vitek is one of 76 engineers nationwide inducted into the National Academy of Engineering for his work in the development of the atomistic modeling of crystalline solids and their application to materials engineering. Vasek has been a member of the MSE faculty since 1978.

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MSE Alum Dr. Katharine Frase elected to the National Academy of Engineering
Dr. Katharine Frase (Ph.D. Matric. 1980) was a member of the class of 2006 elected into the National Academy of Engineering for her "engineering contributions, including the use of lead-free materials, to the development of electronic packaging materials and processes." Katharine is currently the Vice President of Worldwide Packaging and Test at IBM Microelectronics, she also Chair of the National Materials Advisory Board and sits on the Board of Directors for the International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative. Katharine conducted her Ph.D. work at Penn with Greg Farrington.

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Shu Yang receives 2006 NSF CAREER Award
Shu Yang, Skirkanich Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, has received the prestigious Faculty Early Career Award from the National Science Foundation. The award is the most competitive and prestigious award from NSF to young faculty members in all science and engineering fields and places emphasis on high-quality research and novel education initiatives. Shu's proposed research focused on new routes for the manipulation of surfaces and interface properties, such as wettability and adhesion, through the selective grafting of responsive polymer brushes.

Dawn Bonnell receives the 2006 Heilmeier Faculty Award for Excellence in Research
Dawn Bonnell is the 2006 recipient of the SEAS "George H. Heilmeier Faculty Award for Excellence in Research". Dawn was cited for her pioneering studies of the application of scanning probes to the study of complex oxides. Dawn was honored at a reception that followed her lecture, "Probing, Manipulating, and Exploiting Nanostructures".