Description:

The Department of Materials Science and Engineering welcomes you to its 2015 Spring Colloquium Series.

Location: Tech L361, 4:00pm

Nigel Browning
Pacific Northwester National Laboraroty (PNNL)

“In-Situ (S)TEM/DTEM: From High Spatial Resolution to High Temporal Resolution”

The last few years have seen a paradigm change in (scanning) transmission electron microscopy ((S)TEM) with unprecedented improvements in spatial, spectroscopic and temporal resolution being realized by aberration correctors, monochromators and pulsed photoemission sources. Spatial resolution now extends to the sub-angstrom level, spectroscopic resolution into the sub-100meV regime and temporal resolution for single shot imaging is now on the nanosecond timescale (stoboscopic imaging extends this even further to femtoseconds). The challenge now in performing experiments in an (S)TEM is to implement the in-situ capabilities that will allow both engineering and biological systems to be studied under realistic environmental conditions. Performing experiments using in-situ stages or full environmental microscopes presents numerous challenges to the traditional means of analyzing samples in an electron microscope – we are now dealing with the variability of dynamic process rather than a more straightforward static structure. In this presentation, I will discuss the recent developments in the design and implementation of in-situ stages being pursued at the Pacific Northwest National laboratory (PNNL). Examples of the use of these capabilities for the direct imaging of interfaces and defects, to identify the fundamental processes involved in nucleation and growth of nanostructures from solution, and to investigate the electrochemical processes taking place in next generation battery systems will be presented. As the in-situ stages have been designed to be incorporated into both high spatial resolution aberration corrected (S)TEM as well as into high temporal resolution Dynamic TEM (DTEM), the potential for future experiments to study fast dynamics, including those in live biological structures, will also be discussed.

Biography: Nigel Browning is currently a Laboratory Fellow and Chemical Imaging Initiative Lead at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). After receiving his undergraduate degree in Physics from the University of Reading, U.K. and his Ph. D. in Physics from the University of Cambridge, U.K., he joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) as a postdoctoral research associate in 1992. In 1995, he took a faculty position in the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), then moved to the Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Department at the University of California-Davis (UCD) in 2002. He also held a joint appointment in the National Center for Electron Microscopy (NCEM) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) which he moved to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in 2005. In 2009, he also joined the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at UCD.

Nigel has over 20 years of experience in the development of new methods in electron microscopy for high spatial, temporal and spectroscopic resolution analysis of engineering and biological structures. His research has been supported by DOE, NSF, NIH, DOD and by industry, leading to research projects for over 30 graduate students and 29 postdoctoral research fellows. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Microscopy Society of America (MSA). He received the Burton Award from the MSA in 2002, the Coble Award from the American Ceramic Society in 2003 for the development of atomic resolution methods in scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and is co-recipient of R&D 100 and Nano 50 Awards in 2008 and a Microscopy Today Innovation Award in 2010 for the development of the dynamic transmission electron microscope (DTEM). He has over 350 publications and has given over 200 invited presentations on the development and application of advanced TEM methods.

Description:

The Department of Materials Science and Engineering welcomes you to its 2015 Spring Colloquium Series.

Location: Tech L361, 4:00pm

More info coming soon.

Description:

The Department of Materials Science and Engineering welcomes you to its 2015 Spring Colloquium Series.

Location: Tech L361, 4:00pm

“Solid State Ionics: From Defects to Devices”
In 1834 Michael Faraday first observed the conduction of electricity in ionic crystals by experimenting with Ag2S, long before an understanding had been gained of the laws of thermodynamics or the regular arrangement of atoms in the solid state. Much later the transport of ionic species in the solid state was shown to rely upon the presence of point defects in the crystal lattice. This has been well understood since the work of Wagner, Schottky and Frenkel in the early part of the 20th century, when the foundations of solid state ionics were first laid down. Today solid state ionics covers a wide range of materials from ionically conducting polymers to oxide ceramic conductors that show both ionic and electronic conductivity.

The application of these fascinating materials has been widespread. The major applications have been found in electrochemical energy storage and conversion, particularly for clean energy systems. Perhaps the most well-known example is the Li ion battery found in the majority of portable electronic devices. Other examples include: gas sensors, gas separation membranes, fuel cells, electrolysers and photochromic devices.

In this presentation we will explore the development and application of oxide ceramics that show fast ion conduction; looking at the very special crystal and defect structures necessary to promote this phenomenon. We will then examine specific devices and show the difficulty of turning the useful property of ion conduction into a practical device.

Biography: John Kilner gained his PhD from Birmingham University in the UK and joined Imperial College London in 1979 as Wolfson Research Fellow. In 1995 he was appointed Professor of Materials Science and in 2006, BCH Steele Professor of Energy Materials. He also holds appointments at CIC Energigune in Vitoria, Spain where he heads the ceramic electrolyte group, and he is a Principal Investigator at International Institute for Carbon Neutral Research (I2CNER) in Kyushu, Japan.

John has over 30 years experience in the measurement of mass transport and surface properties of ceramic materials for Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs), Solid Oxide Electrolysers (SOEC’s), Ceramic Oxygen Generators (COGs) and solid state Li batteries. He is a co-founder of the AIM listed company Ceres Power Ltd, winner of the European Fuel Cell Forum Schönbein gold medal, the Verulam medal of the IOMMM, and the recipient of the 2005 Royal Society Armourers and Braziers award. In 2012 he lead an international team from the UK, Spain, the US and Japan, that won the International Union of Materials Research Societies Somiya Award for international collaboration.

Description:

The Department of Materials Science and Engineering welcomes you to its 2015 Spring Colloquium Series.

Speaker: Ting Xu, University of California, Berkeley
Location: Tech L361, 4:00pm

“Toward Using Protein/Peptide as Material Building Block”
The scientific community has been striving for decades to generate biomimetic materials to access many of the beneficial properties seen in Nature. However, there has been limited success in obtaining structural control, catalytic activity, molecular transport, and modulated responsiveness to small perturbation. Proteins, nature’s “own” building blocks, have many unique features unmatched by any synthetic organic or inorganic analogs. Rather than developing biomimetic protein-like building blocks, using natural proteins to construct functional materials will clearly change the paradigm of materials science. I will present our explorations to design, synthesize and characterize protein/peptide-based functional materials. Specifically, I will discuss how our fundamental studies in peptide/protein-polymer conjugates led to functional materials in several areas, including 3-helix micelles as long circulating stable nanocarriers, and protein stabilization in non-biological environment.

Biography:
Dr. Ting Xu received her Ph.D from the Department of Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2004. She did her postdoctoral training jointly between the University of Pennsylvania and the Cold Neutron for Biology and Technology (CNBT) team at National Institute of Science and Technology from 2004-2006. She jointed University of California, Berkeley in both the Department of Material Sciences and Engineering and Department of Chemistry in January 2007. Researches in Xu's group take advantage of the recent developments in de novo protein design and peptidomimetics, polymer science and nanoparticles synthesis and manipulation; and use natural building blocks such as peptides and proteins in concert with the self-assembly of block copolymers, conjugated molecule and nanoparticles as platforms to generate nanostructured functional materials. Her research group focuses on a fundamental understanding of multiple length self-assemblies in multi-component systems and aims to generate hierarchically structured nanomaterials with built-in biological, electrical and magnetic functionalities. Prof. Xu has over 60 peer-reviewed journal articles, 5 book chapters and several patents. She is the recipient of 2007 DuPont Science and Technology Grant; 2008 3M Nontenured Faculty Award; 2008 DuPont Young Professor Award; 2009 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award; 2010 Li Ka Shing Woman Research Award; 2011 Camille-Dreyfus Scholar-Teacher Award; and 2011 ACS Arthur K. Doolittle Award. She was named as one of “Brilliant 10” by Popular Science Magazine in 2009.

Description:

The Department of Materials Science and Engineering welcomes you to its 2015 Spring Colloquium Series.

Speaker: Peng Yin, Harvard University
Location: Tech L361, 4:00pm

“Molecular programming with DNA/RNA”
I will discuss my lab's research on engineering digitally programmable DNA/RNA nanostructures and their applications in imaging, sensing, and nanofabrication.

We recently invented a general framework for programming the self-assembly of short synthetic nucleic acid strands into prescribed target shapes or demonstrating their prescribed dynamic behavior. Using short DNA strands, we demonstrated the modular construction of sophisticated nanostructures. Using reconfigurable DNA hairpins, we demonstrated diverse, dynamic behavior.

By interfacing these nucleic acid nanostructures with functional modules, we are introducing digital programmability into diverse applications. (1) Barcoding and imaging life with DNA. Using programmable fluorescent DNA probes, we developed a highly multiplexed (10×), precisely quantitative (>90% precision), and ultra-high resolution (sub-5 nm) optical imaging method. (2) Probing and programming life with DNA/RNA. We constructed unprecedented robust and ultra-specific DNA probes for detecting single base changes in a single-stranded DNA/RNA target. We developed RNA nano-devices as de-novo-designed synthetic gene regulators with unprecedented wide dynamic range and orthogonality, and demonstrated their utility in living cells and on paper-based in vitro systems. (3) DNA-directed nano-foundries. We developed diverse strategies for producing inorganic materials with arbitrarily prescribed 2D (e.g. using graphene, silicon dioxides and 3D shapes (e.g. using silver, gold).

See his lab’s work at http://molecular-systems.net.

Biography: Peng Yin is an Associate Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School and a Core Faculty Member at Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. He directs the Molecular Systems Lab at Harvard. His research interests lie at the interface of information science, molecular engineering, and biology. The current focus is to engineer information directed self-assembly of nucleic acid (DNA/RNA) structures and devices, and to exploit such systems to do useful molecular work. Such de novo designed systems are composed of small synthetic DNA/RNA monomers capable of conditional configuration change and can be programmed to self-assemble, move, and compute. They can serve as programmable controllers for the spatial and temporal arrangements of diverse functional molecules (e.g. fluorophores, proteins), with a wide range of applications in nano-fabrication, imaging, sensing, diagnostics, and therapeutics.
He is a recipient of a 2010 NIH Director's New Innovator Award, a 2011 NSF CAREER Award, a 2011 DARPA Young Faculty Award, a 2011 ONR Young Investigator Program Award, a 2013 NIH Director's Transformative Research Award, a 2013 NSF Expedition in Computing Award, a 2014 ACS Synthetic Biology Young Investigator Award, and a 2014 Finalist for Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists.