Professor Dawn Bonnell
Dawn A. Bonnell
Trustee Professor
Materials Science & Engineering
University of Pennsylvania

Research in the Bonnell Group is focused on the fundamental basis of property variations at atomic scales in complex materials and exploiting these variations to make functional systems.

Issues involving properties of materials at nm size are limiting in several emerging technologies. While several accurate tools exist for structure determination in solids, local property variations have been much less accessible. The application of scanning probe analysis has yielded considerable insight as to size dependent properties and surface or interface mediated bahaviour of materials. We have used atomic resolution STM of transition surfaces to show that variations are accommodated through the stabilization of surface phases. Comparision of in situ measurements to continuum or quantum mechanical models are used to elucidate fundamental bahavior.