Brookhaven Lecture

A very few years ago, the field of nanoscience—the science of materials at the nanometer (nm), or billionth-of-a-meter scale—was relatively unexplored. Today, it is one of the hottest areas of research, with new techniques and new tools to probe the structure and function of materials at the atomic and molecular level. Once scientists had found that, at this ultra-small scale, the chemical and physical properties of materials often differ from the properties they have in bulk form, the rush was on: first to determine the new structural and chemical characteristics of each material, then, to try and use this knowledge to improve products and processes needed in everyday life. Just some of the possible benefits from nanotechnology, for example, are better electronics, stronger and lighter materials, and more efficient catalysts to speed up chemical processes. To talk about some of these exciting discoveries and how he and his colleagues work on them at the Lab, Stanislaus Wong of BNL's Materials Science Department and Stony Brook University (SBU) will talk on Nanovision: Nanotubes, Nanowires, and Nanoparticles, in the 404th Brookhaven Lecture, on Wednesday, May 18. The lecture will be given in Berkner Hall at 4 p.m., and the lecturer will be introduced by Materials Science Chair Jim Misewich. Wong's "nanovision," as he will explain, emerges from how the study of carbon and non-carbon forms of materials at the nanoscale reveals different morphological structures: some are tiny tubes, others are like wires, and others are in particle form. These minute nanostructures yield different properties as they are treated in different ways.