March 2013
book chapter publish in Springer Book "Uv-vis
and PL spectroscopy of nanomaterials characterization"
February 2013
Mircea visits Dept. of Chemistry at BGSU, Bowling Green, OH and gives invited
Colloquium speach.
January 2013
We are organizing a satellite workshop for the May 2013 NSLF/CFN User meeting
titled "Single Molecule Microscopy Tools for Life Science and Materials
Science". The workshop will include invited lectures from experts in the
single molecule detection field and a tour/demo session on our instruments.
Mircea co-chairs the 2013 Villa Conference on Interactions Among
Nanostructures in Houston, TX. www.emnwest.org
December 2012
Mircea gives invited colloquia at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken,
NJ and Syracuse University, Syracuse NY.
Upgrades for the Single Molecule Facility coming beginning of next year: We
are adding spectroelectrochemistry to one of the confocal microscope and a
two-axis piezo stage for the two-color FCS microscope.
November 2012
Zhongwei and Xuyi were selected to present oral contributing talk on
plasmonic hybrids at the 2012 Young Researcher Symposium on Nov.30 at BNL.
October 2012
Mircea will co-edit a special issue on Single Molecule Research with Dr.
Ophir Flomenbom (Chief-editor) and Dr. Kelly Velonia (Co-editor) to appear in
Biophysics Reviews and Letters for 2013.
Dr. Huidong Zang joins us as a postodoctoral researcher to work on the
self-assembly and single molecule characterization of hybrid materials for
optoelectronics. Huidong graduated from UTK, Knoxville with a PhD in Materials
Science. He enjoys running and biking. We welcome Huidong and wish him a very
successful and enjoyable time at BNL.
September 2012
Multiphoton Leica SP5 TCS has been converted from picosecond to femtosecond
NIR excitation for two-photon FLIM and SHG.
Congratulation to Prahlad for successful defending the preliminary exam and
becoming a senior graduate student.
August 2012
Brian Wang joins us as a master student (and CFN user) from Materials Science Department at
Stony Brook (Venkatesh's group). Brian will be working with Prahlad on
transparent plastic PVs, in particular optimization of transparent electrodes.
Congratulation to Zhihua Xu for his appointment as Assistant Professor in the
Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. Zhihua
will start his new career end of this August and we wish him best.
July 2012
Second Harmonic Generation Imaging is now possible on the Multiphoton Leica
SP5 Microscope.
The Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence (TIRF) Microscope is now upgraded
with electrical probing for combined nanoscale optical and electrical
characterization of PVs and LEDs.
June 2012
News release on the recently published ACS Nano paper
see link
Postdoc opening (beginning Sept. 2012) in the self-assembly and
characterization of hybrid organic/inorganic with controlled optoelectronic
properties see link position # 6327
Single molecule paper published by our group in collaboration with Maye's
group (CFN user) at Syracuse in ACS NANO
"Shell-thickness dependent hole transfer in conjugated polymer/quantum dot
hybrids, Z.Xu, C.Hine, M.Maye and M.Cotlet"
see link
April 2012
Mircea joins the Editorial Board of "Spectroscopy:
An International Journal".
Mircea co-chairs the "Villa
2012-Interaction among nanostructures" meeting in Orlando Florida
and gives invited lecture.
February 2012
CFN user article published "A.J.Akey, C.Lu, L.Wu, Y.Zhu,
I.P.Herman, Anomalous photoluminescence Stokes shift in CdSe nanoparticle and
carbon nanotube hybrids, Phys.Rev. B 2012, 85, 045404."
CFN user article published "J.-Y. Gou, L.M.Miller, G.Hou,
X/-H. Yu, X.-Ya Chen, J.-J.Liu, Acetylesterase-mediated deacetylation of pectin
impairs cell elongation, pollen germination and plant reproduction, Plant Cell
2012, 24: 50-65.
January 2012
Our article on the photoluminescence blinking dynamics of Qdots from Small
Wiley has been chosen as a frontispiece article to appear in the January 16th
issue of the journal. Congratulation Zhihua for this really nice piece of work.
see link
The book is out !!! We have been selected to publish an article in the McGrawHill Yearbook of Science and Technology 2012.
"An annual roundup of the amazing breakthroughs in science and technology" with
our work on transparent light harvesting films selected amongst other 190
articles.
see link on Amazon website
Madhura Som joins our group as a rotation student to work on novel plasmonic
nanoclusters with controlled optical output. Madhura is a graduate student from
Materials Science Department at Stony Brook University.
We are setting up a new facility which will combine electrical measurements
with fluorescence microscopy for single molecule optoelectronic devices. The new
instrument will allow nanoscale characterization of both PVs and LEDs and will
have imaging and spectroscopy capabilities. Details soon on the Instrumentation
webpage.
December 2011
Mircea gives an invited lecture on our single molecule research as part of
the Materials Science department colloquia
for graduate students at Stony Brook University.
November 2011
News release on our single molecule work recently published in Small.
see link.
A single molecule paper from our group has been published in
Small-Wiley, Z.Xu, M.Cotlet, "Photoluminescence blinking dynamics of
colloidal Qdots in the presence of external charge traps"
see
link.
October 2011
CFN user article published "H. Han, J.
Zylstra, M.M. Maye, Direct Attachment of
Oligonucleotides to Quantum Dot Interfaces, Chemistry of Materials
2011, 23, 4975"
We welcome Xuyi Wang, a master student from Stony Brook University MSE. Xuyi will help develop methods to
control conjugated polymer structure/function using biological motifs and apply
those methods to devices.
September 2011
Mircea gives invited seminar in the Chemistry Department at the University of
New Mexico in Albuquerque.
Mircea gives invited seminar at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Chemistry
Division.
Congratulation to Zhongwei for successful defending the preliminary exam and
becoming a senior graduate student
August 2011
An invited paper on transparent light harvesting materials was accepted for
the forthcoming McGrawHill Yearbook of Science and Technology 2012
June 2011
Mircea is awarded a seed grant by Stony Brook University together with Prof.
T.A. Venkatesh from Materials Science Department for research on hybrid solar
energy materials.
Our single molecule work on plasmonic dimers done in collaboration with Oleg
Gang and published in
ChemComm. 2010 is highlighted on the DOE Basic Energy Sciences's
Discoveries/Innovation website.
see
link
May 2011
BNL press release on our single molecule electron transfer work published in
Angewandte Chemie.
see link
A single molecule electron transfer paper from our group has been published in Angewandte Chemie Intl. Ed., Z.Xu
and M.Cotlet,
Control of Photoinduced Single Molecule Electron transfer in quantum
dot-fullerene heterodimers"
see
link
The 2011 NSLS CFN workshop "Optical studies of solar nanomaterials: from
single molecules to devices" organized by our group in collaboration with Mat Maye from Syracuse University was a
success. We had great invited lectures, covering topics ranging from conjugate
oligomer/Qdot interactions (Mike Barnes, U.Mass), to inhomogeneous single
molecule interfacial electron transfer (Peter Lu, BGSU), conjugated polymer
conformation probed by single molecule spectroscopy (John Grey, UNM), novel
synthetic methods for bright Qdots (Mat Maye, Syracuse), to charge transfer in
Qdot-based hybrids (Zhihua Xu, BNL),a lab tour, discussions, and lots of
potential for future interactions and collaborations.
CFN user article published "W. Wu, P.N. Njoki, H. Han, H. Zhao, E. A. Schiff, P. S. Lutz, L. Solomon, S.
Matthews, M.M. Maye, Processing Core/Alloy/Shell Nanoparticles: Tunable Optical
Properties and Evidence for Self-Limiting Alloy Growth" J. Phys. Chem. C,
2011, 115, 9933."
CFN user article published "R.K.Pai, L.H. Zhang, D. Nykypanchuk, C.S. Korach, Biomimetic Pathways for
Nanostructured Poly(KAMPS)/aragonite Composites that Mimic Seashell Nacre, Adv. Eng. Materials 13 (10) B415."
Zhihua gives an invited lecture at the 2011 NSLS CFN workshop "Optical
studies of solar nanomaterials: from single molecules to devices" on his single
molecule work on Qdot-hybrid systems.
Zhongwei present a poster at the 2011 NSLS CFN user meeting about recent
results on his conjugated polymer / DNA biosensing work.
Visible pulsed excitation has been added to the solution FCS confocal
microscope so that time-resolved FCS can be now performed with tunable 350-470nm
excitation. check the instrumentation page.
April 2011
CFN user article published
"J. Zylstra, J. Amey, N. J. Miska, L. Pang, C. R. Hine, J. Langer, R. P. Doyle,
M.M. Maye, A Modular Phase Transfer and Ligand Exchange Protocol for Quantum
Dots Langmuir, 2011, 27, 4371.
Mircea gives talk at the Villa Conference on "Interactions
among nanostructures", Las Vegas NE
The transparent thin film honeycomb paper published by our
group in January 2011, has made it to the top 20 most downloaded
articles in the past 12 months for the ACS Chemistry of
Materials.
see link
Mircea gives an invited departmental seminar at UT Dallas Physics Dept.
Prahlad starts as a full-time GRA working in the single
molecule lab and jointly with T.A. Venkatesh's group at Stony Brook. Prahlad's research will focus on the development and characterization
of polymer/nanoparticle thin films for solar cells. Prahlad enjoys travel,
reading and just started learning to play guitar. Welcome Prahlad !
March 2011
Zhihua presents his latest single molecule charge transfer
results at the
APS meeting
in Dallas.
We are organizing a single molecule workshop on May 23rd, 2011
at Brookhaven Natl. Labs. with the topic "Optical studies of solar nanomaterials:
from single molecules to devices". Confirmed invited speakers: Prof. Peter Lu
(Bowling Green, Chemistry), Prof. Michael Barnes (U.Mass Amherst, Chemistry),
Prof. John Grey (U. New Mexico, Chemistry) and Prof. Mathew Maye (Syracuse,
chemistry).
Link to workshop webpage.
February 2011
An invited article from our group, "Transparent
polymer films for solar energy applications" by Zhihua Xu et al,
has been published in SPIE Newsroom's section on Solar and
Alternative Energy, February 18th, 2011. SPIE Newsroom covers the latest
technical developments in optics and photonics and belongs to the International
Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) .
Article in
East Hamptons News about our single molecule work included in the
2010 Top 5 Scientific Discoveries at BNL
Prahlad Kumar Routh, a graduate student from the Materials
Science Department at SUNY Stony Brook New York joins the single molecule
spectroscopy group as a rotation student to perform materials chemistry studies
on polymer/nanoparticle composites. Prahlad earned a BS in Materials Engineering
from IIT Madras, India.
January 2011
Mircea secures funding for a 2 years postdoctoral research
position on the development of advanced photovoltaic devices in collaboration
with CY Nam from the Electronic Materials team at CFN (PI CY Nam).
Brookhaven National Laboratory has included our work on the plasmonic
dimers published in ChemComm 2010 into the Top 5 Scientific Discoveries for
2010.
see BNL
press release
Los Alamos Laboratory has included our work on the honeycomb PPV and
together with Hsing Lin Wang's group among
Top 10 Science and Technology Developments for 2010.
see LANL press release
A paper reporting novel biosensors based on vaterite microparticles has been
published in the ACS Journal of Physical Chemistry C,
"R.K. Pai and M. Cotlet, Highly stable, water soluble, intrinsic fluorescent
hybrid scaffolds for imaging and biosensing"
December 2010
Honeycomb PPV paper is at the
top of most read articles for November in the Chemistry of Materials website
November 2010
CFN user article published "H.Han, G.Di Francesco, M.M.Maye, Size Control and Photophysical Properties of
Quantum Dots Prepared via a Novel Tunable Hydrothermal Route, JPhys
Chem. C. 2010 114 (45) 19270.
Many press releases and interviews on our recent work on polymeric honeycomb
structures, check some below.
PhysicsWorld,
LA
Monitor,
IBTimes,
PVTech,
ClickGreen
BNL press release on our work on the polymer honeycomb structures published in
Chemistry of Materials
Two new pulsed lasers have been added to the single molecule microscopy lab,
440nm and 530nm diodes from Picoquant, with variable repetition rate from 40 MHz
and down. These new diodes will allow us to setup 'Alternate laser excitation
single molecule spectroscopy (ALEX)" for FRET dynamics.
October 2010
A paper reporting efficient charge transfer in large scale micronsized
honeycomb structures based on conductive polymers blended with fullerenes has
been published in the ACS journal Chemistry of Materials:
Z.Xu, H.Tsai, R.K.Pai, H.L.Wang and M.Cotlet,
Structural dynamics and charge transfer via complexation with fullerene in large
area conjugated polymer honeycomb thin films, 2010
ASAP.
Mircea gives an invited seminar for the CFN topical meetings on light
harvesting.
September 2010
Mircea presents single molecule research in a department colloquium series
for graduate students at Stony Brook, MS&E.
August 2010
Our recent work on the single molecule photoluminescence enhancement of Qdots
by gold nanocrystals published in ChemComm 2010 was picked up by a major market
research firm (see details here)
Zhihua gives a talk at the ACS Meeting in Boston about his latest results on
the single molecule electron transfer work in the Nanoscience Program of the
Inorganic Division.
A paper reporting combined FLIM/AFM and single molecule measurements of a water-soluble
conductive polymer was published in J.Phys.Chem.B:
Zhihua Xu,
Hsinhan Tsai, Hsing Lin Wang, Mircea Cotlet, Solvent Polarity Effect on Chain Conformation, Film Morphology and Optical
Properties of a Water-Soluble Conjugated Polymer, J.Phys.Chem.B, 2010,
Aug.20th, ASAP article
July 2010
BNL press release on our single molecule plasmonics paper published recently in
Chem Comm. Also highlights from the
US DOE Pulse.
Zhihua presented a poster on his work on single molecule charge transfer at the Gordon
Research conference "Electronic Processes in Organic Materials".
A single molecule paper on plasmonic nanostructures with our collaborators Oleg
Gang (BNL) and Mat Maye (Syracuse) was published as a communication in ChemCom:
M.M.Maye, O.Gang and M.Cotlet, Photoluminescence enhancement in single Qdot-Au
nanoparticle DNA-linked heterodimers probed by single molecule spectroscopy, 2010,
ChemComm July 16th ASAP article
Mircea gives an invited seminar at the Materials Science & Engineering
Department at Stony Brook University, New York.
June 2010
Congratulations to Zhihua on winning the best poster award at the
2010
National Synchrotron Light Source Users Meeting on a presentation of the
work on single molecule electron transfer.
Mircea gives an invited Chemistry Colloquium Division Seminar at Los Alamos National Laboratory
in New Mexico.
Ranjith presents his biosensing work based on fluorescent vaterites at the
Gordon Research conference on Bioanalytical Sensors in New London, NH.
A new confocal fluorescence microscope dedicated to
two-color Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) measurements
and antibunching has been added to the single molecule spectroscopy facility.
Check the Instrumentation page for details and pictures.
Zhongwei starts as a full-time GRA working in the single molecule lab.
Besides his DNA/conjugated polymer interaction project, Zhongwei will work on
the development and single molecule optical characterization of hybrid
nanostrucutres with potential for biosensing and light harvesting. Welcome Zhongwei !
May 2010
CFN user article published "X.H.Peng, M.Y.Sfeir, F.Zhang, J.A.Misewich, S.S.Wong, Covalent Synthesis and
Optical Characterization of Double-Walled Carbon Nanotube-Nanocrystal
Heterostructures, JPhys Chem. C. 2010 114 (19) 8766."
Ranjith's work on fluorescent vaterites highlighted by his home institute,
IINL Braga, Portugal.
Our chaperonin biosensor article published in Small 2009, 5, pp.1036 was
highlighted in the CINT 2009 annual report.
April 2010
The 5th workshop on "Making single molecule fluorescence lifetime easier",
held for the first time at Brookhaven and together with Picoquant Germany, was a
real success. Thanks to all the people that contributed to this single molecule
event that hosted almost 50 participants and invited speakers. We had 2.5 days
of intensive scientific discussions on up to date single molecule spectroscopy
topics and new single molecule methods, with high quality invited and
contributed lectures, hands-on sessions on CFN single molecule instruments and a
very stimulating poster session. Some participants expressed their intention to come back to CFN as
users of some of our instruments. Check out some pictures taken during the
workshop at www.bnl.gov/smf.
Zhihua and Ranjith presented their single molecule/single particle work at
the workshop "Making single molecule fluorescence lifetime easier" which was
held at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials at BNL.
March 2010
Ranjith went to IINL Braga, Portugal to present a seminar about his research
progress at CFN BNL.
February 2010
A paper with our collaborators from LANL appeared in ACS Applied Materials and
Interfaces:
C Wang, H Tsai, Z Xu, M
Cotlet, H Wang, Synthesis and characterization of ethylene glycol substituted
PPV derivatives, ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, 2010, 2 (3), 738-47.
January 2010
A single molecule paper from our group was published in J.Phys.Chem.B:
K Mudalige, S Habuchi,
R.K. Pai, P.M.Goodwin, f.DeSchryver, M Cotlet, Photophysics of the red
chomophore of HcRed: evidence for cis-trans isomerization and protonation state
changes, J. Phys. Chem. B, 2010, 114: (13), 4678-85.
Zhihua presented a contributed lecture at the Single Molecule section of the
SPIE Photonics West conference in San Francisco about his newest results on
single molecule photoinduced charge transfer in quantum dot-carbon based
nanoclusters.
Zhongwei Liu, a graduate student from the Materials Science
Department at SUNY Stony Brook New York joins the single molecule spectroscopy
group as a rotation student to investigate DNA detection by FRET sensitization
via water soluble conjugated polymers.
November 2009
A paper from our group on the thermochromism
of conjugated polymers appeared on the 2009 November issue of J. Phys. Chem. B:
C Wang, Y Gao,
A Shreve, C Zhong, HL Wang, K Mudalige, M Cotlet, Thermochromism of a
poly(phenylene vinylene): untangling the roles of polymer aggregate and chain
conformation , J. Phys. Chem. B 2009, 113: 16110-17.
June 2009
Dr. Zhihua Xu joins the single molecule spectroscopy effort as a postdoctoral
researcher funded by DOE. Zhihua comes from the University of Tennessee at
Knoxville where we obtained a PhD in Materials Science. At BNL he will use
single molecule methods to investigate charge transfer in composite materials
for solar energy applications.
March 2009
A single molecule paper on biosensing with our collaborators
from LANL and NASA Ames was published in SMALL:
H Xie,
B Swanson, H Kagawa, J Trent, , K Mudalige, M Cotlet, An intrinsically
fluorescent recognition ligand scaffold based on chaperonin proteins and
semiconductor quantum dot conjugates, Small 2009, 5: 1036-42.
Dr. Ranjith Krishna Pai joins the single molecule spectroscopy group as
a postdoctoral researcher sponsored through a joint project between CFN and INL
Braga, Portugal. Ranjith won a prestigious 2-years fellowship from the
International Iberian Nanoscience Laboratory in Portugal to pursue a project at
BNL which is focused on energy transfer studies in biomimetic nano/microstructures
with single molecule methods. Ranjith was previously with the University of Ulm
where he got a PhD in biomineralization and then at the Stockholm University in
Sweden as a postdoctoral researcher.
February 2009
Mircea secures funds for a 2 years postdoctoral research position in the
single molecule group with focus on hybrid inorganic/organic materials for solar
energy conversion.
July 2008
Mircea secures funds for a 2 years postdoctoral research position in the
single molecule group with focus on energy transfer studies in biomimetic nano/microstructures
through a joint project between CFN and International Iberian Nanotechnology
Laboratory in Braga, Portugal.
October 2007
Mircea moves from Los Alamos National Laboratory in NM to Brookhaven as an
Assistant Scientist in the newly created Center for Functional Nanomaterials
(CFN). At CFN he will set up a single molecule spectroscopy facility and related
activities.
