454th Brookhaven Lecture Featuring Charles Black

Self-Assembly of Nanostructured Electronic Devices

Charles Black

Charles Black with a scanning electron microscope at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Given suitable atmospheric conditions, water vapor from the air will crystallize into beautiful structures that we call snowflakes. Nature provides many other examples of this spontaneous organization of materials into regular patterns — a process known as self-assembly.

Self-assembly works at all sizes and, under the appropriate circumstances, it can be a useful tool for organizing materials at the nanometer-scale. In particular, self-assembly provides a precise method for designing materials with improved electronic properties, thereby enabling advances in semiconductor electronics and solar devices.

On Wednesday, December 16, join Charles Black of the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) for the 454th Brookhaven Lecture, titled “Self-Assembly of Nanostructured Electronic Devices.” All are invited to attend this free talk, which is open to the public and will be held in Berkner Hall at 4 p.m. Refreshments will be offered before and after the lecture. Visitors to the Lab 16 and older must carry a photo ID while on site.

During this talk, Black will discuss examples of integrating self-assembly into semiconductor microelectronics, where advances in the ability to define circuit elements at ever-higher resolution have largely fueled more than 40 years of consistent performance improvements. Self-assembly also holds promise for advances in the performance of solar devices, and Black will describe recent experimental results from his group at the CFN exploring demonstrations of nanostructured photovoltaic devices.

Black earned a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University in 1996. He then worked as a research staff member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY, from 1996 until 2006. Black joined the Center for Functional Nanomaterials at Brookhaven Lab in 2006, where he is a scientist and group keader for Electronic Materials. He has authored more than 60 published scientific papers, and currently holds 25 U.S. patents.

To join Black for lunch at an off-site restaurant following the lecture, contact Lois Caligiuri, loisc@bnl.gov, Ext. 5415.

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