George Malliaras, Prince Philip Professor - US grants

9980100
Clancy
This is an award under the KDI initiative that is managed by DMR and CTS. The PIs seek to describe structural and dynamical order during a phase transformation. This order can range over the continuum between perfect order of a crystalline material and the nearly total absence of long-range order of the amorphous phase. The large dimensionality needed to represent the total dynamical order of a system will be reduced to a small set of parameters to define the possibility of a transformation between phases. Unified models will be provided which define a set of order parameters that can be applied to materials with various levels of order; an accuracy of distinction between phases of more than 90% will be attempted. Test bed materials are both organic (small rigid thiophenes that are ideal for comparison to simulation studies) and inorganic (various morphological forms of silicon). To model these accurately and to make large-scale dynamical simulations needed to study order transformations, a new quantum mechanical algorithm will need to be developed to allow calculations with at least the speed and accuracy of current tight-binding methods. The PIs propose to develop such a quantum mechanical algorithm based on the Harris functional and plan to incorporate Voter's hyperdynamic techniques to increase accessible simulation times. Reverse Monte Carlo techniques will also be used to develop a scheme for creating systems with a chosen extent of order.
Using this suite of linked simulation tools that can describe processes from nanoscopic to macroscopic length scales, the PIs will establish co-relation and phase transformation probability of these material models subject to processing conditions (thermal cycles, nucleation sites, plasma-enhanced precursors, etc.) The proposed simulation methodology will be tested on a solidifying interface structure, examining and understanding the roles of molecular architecture and inter-atomic potentials. Quantitative links will be developed that connect processing conditions and the resulting structure in complex materials. The critical point at which the final structure of the solid is predictable or controllable given a metastable starting point of known order.
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This is an award under the KDI initiative that is managed by DMR and CTS. The proposed work constitutes a new computational challenge. Observing that the ability to tailor local and long-range structural order in materials is of great technological utility, the PIs seek to develop large-scale numerical simulation techniques that would be used to provide a fundamental description of structural order and processing in these materials. Work will be performed in conjunction with experiments on model systems of commercial interest. This work will contribute to the field of organic optoelectronics, creating polymers with controlled properties, in modeling the low-temperature processing of silicon, the integration of biosensors, and stacked 3D components. It will lead to a coupling of organic and inorganic systems for biosensors.
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This CAREER project aims to advance fundamental understanding of organic interfaces, and to provide a unique environment to prepare students for careers in the rapidly growing area of or-ganic optoelectronics. In devices such as light emitting diodes, thin film transistors, photodiodes and photorefractives, a primary problem limiting the ability to improve performance and stability is lack of a fundamental understanding of the interface between organic materials and metal electrodes. Achieving a fundamental understanding of carrier transport across these interfaces, identifying and understanding the primary mechanisms of degradation at these interfaces, and then utilizing this understanding to improve the electrical properties are the scientific/engineering issues being addressed in this project. A series of experiments seeking to elucidate the mecha-nism of charge injection at metal/organic interfaces and leading to improvement of the perform-ance and stability of metal/organic contacts will be conducted. The approach is to first establish the dependence of injection on electric field, temperature and materials parameters such as layer thickness, dielectric constant, energy barrier and the presence of traps, at model metal/organic interfaces. These interfaces will be formed by depositing organic materials with well-characterized charge transport properties on properly chosen metals. Second, doping of the or-ganic will be induced by the introduction of appropriate thin conducting layers at the interface and its influence on injection investigated. A variety of experimental techniques will be used to probe the nature of these interfaces and contact properties. Finally, the stability of both pristine and doped interfaces will be studied with accelerated aging tests in order to deduce primary modes of degradation and determine their influence on injection.
The research project will be closely integrated with an education and outreach program incorpo-rating both conventional courses and extensive mentoring. New courses will be developed to provide undergraduate and graduate students with a solid background in organic optoelectronics. In addition to graduate research assistants, undergraduate students will be intimately involved in the research program - providing them with a unique opportunity to complement their theoretical training with hands-on research activities. A greater community focusing on organic optoelec-tronics will be assembled from diverse groups across the campus and other universities, which will give students the opportunity to experience a truly multidisciplinary environment. Also, an extended outreach program aimed at K-12, female/minority colleges, and industry, will be devel-oped to extend these benefits to the broad community. The proposed program will create a center of excellence in research and education at Cornell that will benefit the field of organic optoelec-tronics and society at large. The broad education and outreach plan will establish a unique envi-ronment expected to attract students to sciences and nurture the researchers that will shape the future of organic optoelectronics.
%%% The project addresses fundamental research issues in a topical area of materials science having high technological relevance. The scope of the project will expose students to challenges in materials synthesis, processing, and characterization. An important feature of the project is the strong emphasis on education, and the integration of research and education.
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Simmons College, a predominantly undergraduate women's college, and the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at Cornell University establish a partnership to develop opportunities for science students at Simmons to participate in materials-related research throughout their undergraduate careers. The overall thrust of the project focuses on establishing a collaborative Simmons/Cornell research program on organic electroluminescent materials that provides opportunities for students to work with faculty on timely research projects, have access to sophisticated instrumentation, and gain related work experience in industrial settings. Another goal of the project is to interest female undergraduates in participating in material research and to encourage them to consider further career explorations in this area.

This project establishes a model relationship between a predominantly undergraduate institution and a large research university and its federally funded research Center. The undergraduate institution enhances its research efforts through increased access to collaborators and instrumentation at the large research university. The latter benefits from enhanced recruitment access to a talented pool of undergraduates and from opportunities for its graduate students to interact with undergraduate faculty and to consider a postgraduate career at an undergraduate institution.

This proposal was received in response to the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Initiative, Program Solicitation NSF 01-157, in the NIRT category. The proposal focuses on developing novel chemical approaches to forming well-behaved and robust interfaces between small organic molecules and both conducting and insulating inorganic ultrathin films for applications in molecular scale electronics. Much of the success of present day microelectronics is due to the ability to integrate a variety of (mostly) inorganic materials into structures useful for devices. For example, silicon dominates the field not because of its intrinsic electrical properties, but because of the quality of the interfaces it forms (e.g., the Si-Si02 interface). The work to be conducted here seeks to develop organic-inorganic interfaces possessing equivalent or superior properties, where small organic molecules form the active layers. The solution lies in the development of chemically based approaches to the formation of the critical interface between the inorganic layers (both metallic and dielectric) and the organic layers. Success in this venture will require the application of sophisticated synthetic organometallic chemistry, surface and interface science, self-assembly and nanofabrication, and "chemically accurate' computer simulation. The team that has been assembled at Cornell possesses expertise and significant experience in all of these areas. The organic layers will typically be formed by a process of self-assembly (in solution or in vacuo) on substrates that have been patterned to expose selected areas comprised of metal (e.g., Au), oxide (e.g., Si02), or nitride where the self-assembled monolayer will bind. Study of patterned substrates is vital for the investigation of a number of issues, from the fundamental to those related to device design and performance. Ultimately the team seeks as a final set of goals: (i) development of novel organometallic precursors for the formation of both conducting and insulting layers that will interface seamlessly with the organic layer; (ii) development of a fundamental understanding of the interface formation process, including the effects of process variables such as temperature on the molecular scale structure of the interface; (iii) demonstration of controllable device properties for molecular scale electronics, given enhanced knowledge of the interfacial chemistry and physics; and (iv) development of computer models that can both predict the atomic scale structure of the interface, and the resulting electronic properties. A final significant challenge put forward by the Cornell team will be the development of a workshop on research ethics. From the experience of working to develop this workshop the participants hope to build a better understanding and recognition of responsible research conduct, and to know the relevant philosophical underpinnings of ethics sufficiently well to be able to make ethical choices in both the development and practice of their research.

0244118 Buhrman

This award funds a three-year Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Site at Cornell University at the Center for Nanoscale Systems in Information Technologies, an NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC) established in 2001. The program will support twelve students per year for research opportunities in nanotechnology. The central emphasis of this program is on providing each participant with a stimulating research experience and an effective introduction to nanotechnology research. The program is also designed to provide participants with new skills and resources to advance their research capabilities through short courses on topics that are not addressed in the standard undergraduate engineering and science curriculum. These will include short workshops on technical writing and public speaking; and short course lectures and hands-on experience with scanned probe instrumentation, metal machining, electronics, lithography, and pattern-transfer. Students will be recruited from throughout the United States for an opportunity to (1) experience independent research; (2) develop practical skills for research activities; (3) gain in-depth perspective on opportunities in nanotechnology and in interdisciplinary science and engineering; (4) become a part of the nanotechnology research community; and (5) recognize that effective reporting and dissemination of results is an integral part of research. The targeted undergraduate participants will be non-Cornell university students with a particular focus on students from institutions that are not major research institutions and students from population groups underrepresented in research fields in engineering in the United States.

Technical: This project seeks to understand the mechanism of operation of ionic transition metal complexes (iTMCs) configured as solid-state electroluminescent devices. These materials can have efficiencies (10 Lm/W) and brightness (300 cd/m2 ), and can be fabricated using a single layer of organic material processed from solution. Contrary to mainstream organic light emitting diodes, they do not require low work function electrodes, and as a result offer potential for electroluminescent devices with reduced encapsulation requirements that can be deposited on practically any substrate. Additionally, iTMCs enable unique device fabrication paradigms, such as by soft-contact lamination, as well as the development of large-area illumination panels that do not require patterning of the organic layer. However, in order to realize this potential, advances in understanding and functionality are needed. Namely, their color gamut needs to be extended to the blue part of the spectrum, and their lifetime is practically untested. A goal will be to synthesize novel iTMCs that show blue emission and improved stability in devices. The aim is to obtain deeper understanding of the device physics of mixed conductors, and elucidate device-relevant degradation pathways for transition metal complexes. The project will also address device fabrication with improved stability under minimal encapsulation conditions, and emission that covers the visible part of the spectrum. The research is expected to impact other materials classes, such as ceramics, and other technologies, such as fuel cells and photovoltaics.
Non-Technical: This project provides integrated education and research training to graduate and undergraduate students in an interdisciplinary field including chemistry, engineering, materials science and physics. This project brings together faculty from the Departments of Materials Science & Engineering of Cornell University, the Department of Chemistry at Princeton University, as well as from the Departments of Physics and Chemistry at Simmons College. The partnership between Cornell and Simmons (a predominately undergraduate women's college) will involve over 35 undergraduate students in research. In addition, the Chemistry and Physics Liaison (a student organization for chemistry and physics majors) will incorporate a new demonstration highlighting light emitting diodes into its yearly outreach activities for middle school and high school classrooms.

This Materials World Network award to Cornell University is to study the synthesis and novel deposition of organic electronic materials using supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO2) and to evaluate these new materials and processes in optoelectronic devices such as light emitting devices, field effect transistors and photovoltaic devices. The award co-funded and managed by the Electronic Materials program in the Division of Materials Research will support the collaborative research between scientists at Cornell University and the Australian team at Melbourne. The significance of the proposed research is that if successful, the science developed would be an environmentally friendly way, organic semiconductor device properties and features that are presently inaccessible by the processing of these materials using normal organic solvents. The planned research benefits from the complementary skills of this international team in which the Melbourne group will bring to the collaboration their exceptional synthetic capabilities to provide materials suited for processing with scCO2 while those groups at Cornell will provide expertise in the evaluation of materials properties and their unique experience in the use of scCO2 to fabricate devices.

This collaborative effort combines the complementary skills of Professor Andrew Holmes at the University of Melbourne and Professors George Malliaras and Christopher Ober of Cornell University. The Holmes group has played an important role in the successful realization of organic electronics. The program envisages exchanges of the Cornell and Melbourne PIs annually and a longer exchange of co-workers. Connections between the groups will take place through exchange of personnel and regularly scheduled videoconferences. The resulting transferable skills will be shared with each institution during the exchange visits of individual co-workers. The program will provide a highly interdisciplinary education to undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral students in the fields of materials chemistry, materials science and applied physics and is expected to generate strong interest from industry.

MRI Proposal: 0722812

The objective of this proposal is to advance nanotechnology research by providing state-of-the-art resources to the national user community in an open environment and technically supported by knowledgeable staff for hands-on use. This award provides for four new nanotechnology capabilities to be located at four of the NNIN facilities and available to all users across the nation: 1) for advanced materials deposition and novel device fabrication, a Carbon Nanotube Growth System (Cornell), 2) for processing of germanium semiconductors, an Automated Chemical Processor (Stanford), 3) for materials and biological systems characterization, a Mass Spectrometer (GaTech), 4) for processing of novel magnetic, optical and electronic devices, a multi-target reactive sputtering system (UCSB).

Intellectual Merit: These instruments will enable scientific research across nanotechnology by providing reproducible materials techniques for carbon nanotube, germanium and magnetic/optical/electronic structures; and for characterization of biological systems. NNIN's technical staff will extend the capabilities of these instruments by interacting with users and incorporating these new capabilities into user research projects. This interaction will foster strong inter-disciplinary and innovative uses across the breadth of nanotechnology.

Broader Impact: Through NNIN's large research user population, this technology will have wide geographic reach involving researchers from academia, small and large companies and federal research laboratories. NNIN's educational efforts?specific undergraduate research projects using these instruments, the training of over 1300 new students every year, freely accessible web-based resources, and nanotechnology-focused workshops?will focus on outreach to the student and scientific community at large.

The development of the materials necessary for a sustainable future is an area of profound global and scientific importance. This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship program (IGERT) combines an interdisciplinary research experience with a formal education program designed to apply basic scientific knowledge to real problems in sustainable materials drawn from industrial interactions. Cornell faculty and student participants are united from 7 diverse departments of science and engineering and the Johnson School of Management and will have the opportunity to augment their research efforts with international collaborators. Intellectual merit includes the development of materials from renewable resources, including plant products, exploration of new, high performance materials for energy storage and conversion and the discovery of new methods for the synthesis and processing of materials with reduced environmental impact. Educational efforts feature a module-based course that will introduce students to the principles of sustainable design and the formidable energy challenges facing our society. Students will also gain familiarity with business thinking, industrial practices and business opportunities and challenges related to sustainability. The broader impacts of this IGERT program include partnerships with two Historically Black Colleges/Universities and an undergraduate summer research program will address the issue of underrepresented groups in the materials field. The IGERT program will also develop a freely available web-based archive of the seminar series on Materials for a Sustainable Future. IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the interdisciplinary background, deep knowledge in a chosen discipline, and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries.

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).

This research project will study the fundamental behavior of new devices made to study organic semiconductors using a newly discovered process called orthogonal lithography. Organic semiconductors used in thin, flexible electronic circuits offer the possibility of creating low cost electronics that will provide new intelligent capabilities to everyday items. An example of this might be a smart bandage, a wound covering that can sense healing, communicate to medical staff and possibly release antibiotics. Orthogonal lithography, a breakthrough fabrication process for organic electronic materials that was discovered at Cornell University involves the use of patterning materials soluble in environmentally safe fluorine containing solvents. Orthogonal lithography will be used to make complex, multilayer organic semiconductor devices not possible by other means. We expect a range of new materials, processes and possibly industries will be developed. The resulting transferable skills will be shared between Cornell and our partners at Cambridge University during exchange visits of individual coworkers. Participating students and other researchers will not only take part in globally leading research, but through interactions with our UK partners, will be exposed to the transfer of science to the marketplace.

This project aims to leverage orthogonal lithography to create unique device architectures that will elucidate the fundamentals of organic electronic materials. Key research opportunities such as the ability to probe charge transport in a single crystalline domain of a conjugated polymer will be the focus of the proposed research. The project combines the complementary skills of the Cornell Materials and the Cambridge Organic Electronics groups in a study that will elucidate vital aspects of organic semiconductor physics and advance organic patterning science. The significance of the proposed research is that if successful we have the opportunity to better understand charge generation, injection, transport, and recombination in organic materials as well as to achieve organic semiconductor device properties and features that are presently inaccessible. The planned research benefits from the complementary skills of this experienced international team in which the group at Cornell will provide expertise in the both the development of sophisticated resists and processes for the benign patterning of organics, and in precision materials characterization, while the Cambridge group will bring to the collaboration their exceptional device physics capabilities. The PIs will conduct outreach to high school girls and particularly their teachers, as this greatly increases its impact. Finally, industry has shown interest in the anticipated discoveries coming from this research.

The objective of this research is to provide enabling instrumentation for controlled patterning of nanostructures at dimensions comparable to molecular length scales. The approach is to acquire a next generation high voltage electron beam lithography instrument that exceeds the current limits of precision and accuracy.
Electron beam lithography equipment employs a digitally controlled beam of electrons to directly shape nanoscale patterns. The new level of speed, placement accuracy, overlay, and stability will allow resolution and control on the sub-10 nm length scale enabling scientific and technological breakthroughs in sectors that include: communications, high density computer storage, health care diagnostic, low cost electronics, and energy research and products. This award will place advanced patterning equipment at the Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility where it will be openly accessed by hundreds of researchers annually.
Broader impacts of this award devolve from CNF?s active and committed role in nanotechnology education, mentorship, human resources and economic development. CNF staff conduct over a thousand group training sessions on individual equipment for over 700 users annually. CNF staff teach semi-annual nanotechnology laboratory courses, organize workshops specifically for practitioners of e-beam lithography and will develop an advanced e-beam training module. CNF sponsors and hosts over 20 undergraduate researchers each summer focusing on nanotechnology research. The CNF REU program particularly targets women, underrepresented minorities, and students with little or no prior research experience. In addition, CNF provides significant technology support to small innovative companies with limited laboratory resources, resulting in significant economic development opportunities.

PI: Abidian, Mohammad Reza
Proposal Number: 1431799
Institution: Materials Research Society
Title: Advanced Multifunctional Biomaterials for Neuroprosthetic Interfaces (Revision) in San Francisco, CA, on April 21-25, 2014

This proposal seeks support primarily for students and young investigators from US institutions to attend the Advanced Multifunctional Biomaterials for Neuroprosthetic Interfaces Symposium that will be held at the 2014 Materials Research Society meeting, San Francisco, CA, April 21-25, 2014. The main theme of this interdisciplinary symposium is the study and application of biomaterials that interface with biological systems, especially neural cells and tissues. Session topics will highlight the latest efforts to achieve safe and effective strategies to communicate with neurons. As such, the scientific content and timing of the symposium are both appropriate. The list of confirmed invited speakers includes prominent investigators in their respective areas of research.

Neural prostheses are critical in treating or assisting people with disabilities of neural function. In spite of recent advances in neural interface technology, engineering stable and reliable electronic-neural tissue interfaces for long-term functionality remains a critical issue. The challenge for material science is to design and develop advanced multifunctional biomaterials to safely integrate with neural tissue with minimal biological response. Furthermore, the implant should match the mechanical properties of surrounding tissue to prevent injury due to micromotion and allow for adequate exchange of nutrients and waste so that the surrounding tissue remains healthy. This symposium will focus on the latest advances in biomaterials to control/engineer neuron-electronic interfaces to produce stable and functional implants with greater longevity than what is possible today.