Director's Message
Dear Colleagues:
Emilio
Mendez, Director, Center for Functional Nanomaterials
As I write to you, we are busy preparing for visitors on July 12, the first Summer Sunday of Brookhaven’s public tour program. We have lots to show off! So much has happened since the CFN’s last newsletter -- in staffing, in science, and in the facility itself.
When I walk through the building, I see many of our new hires, named later in this newsletter. I’ve also met Adelphi University professor Justyna Widera and her two students, hosted this summer by Chuck Black in a research program arranged through the Lab’s Office of Educational Programs. The summer months have also brought a bump in users. Overall, we’ve seen strong growth in our user count, already up to 123 unique users in the last two quarters. We had 107 in fiscal year 2008.
Certainly, the CFN facility itself, with all its capabilities, is a big factor in attracting users. For example, I know that Aaron Stein is quite pleased with the new e-beam tool he and colleagues recently installed. This is an electron beam lithography writer, which allows us to draw any pattern or design and then transfer that image to silicon, metal or any kind of material. With the e-beam tool, we can write features down to eight nanometers and over an area as large as several millimeters. These are pretty rare devices. In the Northeast, there are only two, the other one being at Cornell in upstate New York. Using funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, we were able to make some major enhancements to the device. It’s now in top shape and ready for users as they graduate from Aaron’s training class.
Again with thanks to stimulus dollars, the CFN will be investing in several new tools. The list isn’t final yet, but we’re putting specifications together for the following:
- mask aligner for optical lithography
- electron energy-loss spectrometer
- reactive ion etcher for metals
- transmission electron microscope for soft materials
- reactor-scanning tunneling microscope
Of course, these nice instruments are simply the means to our product: cutting-edge science at the nanoscale. Earlier this year, Oleg Gang and his team published their latest research in the very prestigious journal Nature Materials. In this newsletter, you can read about his DNA-based assembly line for constructing nanoclusters. Someday, this method could lead to nanofabrication of such devices as biosensors and solar cells.
I’ll close now with a reminder for all of us in the CFN this summer: Please. No shorts or open-toed footwear in the labs.
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> Next article: Open House at the CFN
