General Lab Information

News

2019

August 2019

July 2019

  • Congratulation to Jia-Shiang for the work published in ACS Nano on charge transfer between quantum dots and atomically thin molibdenum disulfide. Nice work at showing Marcus's theory on electron transfer still holds for these nanomaterials. (link)
  • Mircea present group work to Garcia Center in SBU.

June 2019

  • We are in the local news (link)
  • An invited perspective article in ACS Omega on nanoscale charge transfer with quantum dots (link), congratulations to all contributors to Cotlet group and collaborators over the past years. Hard work paid well.

May 2019

  • Mingxing goes to CLEO 2019 to present his work on 2D materials paper on 2D molybdenum diselenide in ACS Photonics. Congratulation Mingxing
  • Mircea visits U.Penn., the ECE and MSE Departments

April 2019

  • We are organizing an ACS Symposium in 2020 spring in Philladelphia, PA with Deep Jariwalla from U.Penn and Don DiMarzio from NEXT NG. See you next year in Philladelphia.
  • We are part of the Battelle Celebration of Solvers 2019 and posted in Battelle news

March 2019

2018

August 2018

  • Jia-Shiang is offered DOE graduate fellowship award by the US DOE SGSR. Congratulation Jia-Shiang.

July 2018

  • Mingxing's AFM paper is chosen as a Frontispiece article (link).

June 2018

  • Juliana Mendez from RPI joins our group as a SULI summer undergraduate. Juliana will work on the synthesis of TMDC quantum dots for QM applications.
  • Our group hosted Deep Jariwala from U Penn who toured CFN facilities and gave a seminar on 2D material solar cells.

May 2018

  • Our group and Mat Sfeir's group hosted Professor Jun Yan from U.Mass Amherst who toured the advanced optical facilities at CFN and gave a seminar on magneto-optical PL of 2D TMDCs.
  • Mingxing gives talk at CFN/NSLS-2 user meeting workshop on Emerging Nanomaterials and Nanostructures for Plasmonic and Nanophotonics Applications" (see link)
  • Jia-Shiang wins scholarship award for CFN/NSLS-2 user meeting.
  • BNL press release on our paper in AFM (link)

April 2018

  • Our group hosted Professor Gonzalo Cosa from McGill University who toured our CFN facilities and gave a seminar with focus on single molecule bioprobes.  
  • Mingxing and Jia-Shiang present at MRS Spring 2018 in Phoenix AZ.
  • Mingxing paper on photocurrent imaging of 0D-2D is accepted in Advanced Functional Materials (see link).

February 2018

  • Jia-Shiang' paper on perovskites with user collaborator Dr. Mat Maye from Syracuse U. is inside Cover article in Particle Journal for February 2018.  see link.
  • Jia-Shiang' s paper among the most accessed papers for January 2018 (see link)

January 2018

  • Mircea joins the Interational Advisory Board of the Particle Journal-Wiley (IF 4.5).
  • Mircea hosts Prof. Mike Ward from NYU as the CFN Colloquium speaker for January.
  • We are organizing the NSLS-2/CFN workshop on "Emerging Nanomaterials and Nanioostructures for Plasmonic and Nanophotonics Applications" see link

2017

November 2017

  • Jia-Shiang's paper on 0D-2D and 1D-2D perovskite nanocrystals-single layer graphene is accepted in Particle and Particle Systems Characterization journal (IF 4.4).
  • Mingxing presents oral lecture at ECRS 2017, Upton NY.
  • Jia-Shiang presents poster at ECRS2017, Upton NY.
  • Mircea presents lecture at MRS Fall 2017 in Boston and participates in NSRC booth expo.

October 2017

  • Our group enjoyed the Department annual retreat at the Willows Creek resort in Mount Sinai.
  • Mircea hosts Professor Mike White from Stony Brook U. as the CFN colloquium speaker for this month.

September 2017

  • Mircea presents invited lecture at the Nanoscale Science Research Centers meeting on Soft Bio Nano materials in Santa Fe, NM. 
  • Mircea presents invited lecture at theInternational Conference on Methods and Applications of Fluorescence (MAF2017) in Bruges, Belgium. (link). That same conference had Prof. W.E.Moerner (Nobel in Chemistry 2014) as plenary speaker.

August 2017

  • Huidong's paper on electron transfer of single near infrared PbS quantum dots with titanium dioxide appears in Nanoscale (IF 7.87) (link)

June 2017

  • Zack Keck from SUNY Binghamton joins our group as a summer intern with the SULI program.

May 2017

  • Jia-Shiang presents at NSLS2-CFN poster session.

March 2017

  • We have deployed our Scanning Photocurrent Microscope to the user program and it will be available starting cycle 2, June 1st. 2017-on.
  • The Advanced Optical Microscopy facility supports 36 user proposals including rapid access ones.

February 2017

  • Advances in Engineering highlights our work on quantum dot-tin disulfide hybrids (link)

January 2017

  • Prof. Wenyan Zhao from PR China joins us for a one year sabbatical time to work on metal oxide nanowires for solar cells.
  • Mircea presents invited lecture at the BNL-SBU detector workshop in Stony Brook.
  • Cryo PL lifetimes possible now in the range 77K-500K for thin films, powders, solutions.
  • Mircea presents invited lecture at SPIE Photonics West 2017.
  • Paper published  together with user collaborator Stan Wong from SBU Chemistry, "H Liu, J Han, C McBean, CS Lewis, PK Routh, M Cotlet, SS Wong, Synthesis-driven, structure-dependent optical behavior in phase-tunable NaYF 4:Yb, Er-based motifs and associated heterostructures, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics 2017, 19, 2153.

2016

October 2016

  • Jia-Shiang presents at YRS2016 the work on perovskeite dots.
  • Jia-Shian Chen is admitted to doctoral program at Stony Brook and joins our group as a PhD candidate.

August 2016

  • Dr. Mingxing Li from University of Tennessee joins our group as postdoc to work on optoelectronic characterization of 2D materials. Mingxing did his PhD in the group of Prof. Bin Hu at UTK on organic spintronics.

June 2016

  • Prahlad departs our group to become a postdoc at Columbia University in New York. Good luck with your career and we will definitely miss you and your computational skills.

May 2016

  • Paper published in ACS Nano on perovskite quantum dot synthesis and characterization in collaboration with Prof. Mat Maye's group at Syracuse University as user of CFN facilities: Tennyson L. Doane, Kayla L. Ryan, Laxmikant Pathade, Kevin J. Cruz, Huidong Zang, Mircea Cotlet, and Mathew M. Maye, Using Perovskite Nanoparticles as Halide Reservoirs in Catalysis and as Spectrochemical Probes of Ions in Solution, ACS Nano 2016. (see link).
  • We organize NSLS-2/CFN workshop on two dimensional nanomaterials (link).

April 2016

  • BNL news release on the ACS Nano and APL papers on Qdot-tin disulfide hybrids recent works from our group (see link)
  • Our work on tin disulfide is highlighted by Stony Brook University (see link) and Electrical Engineering Times (see link)

March 2016

February 2016

  • Our facility has been upgraded with a 1kHz Coherent Legend/MICRA regenerative amplifier and an OPERA optical parametric amplifier to deliver light from 250nm-20000 nm for optical excitation of time-resolved PL.

January 2016

2015

December 2015

  • Prahlad successfully defends his thesis to become Dr. Prahlad. Congratulations.
  • Mircea presents talk at 2015 MRS fall Boston and his talk is highlighted see link

October 2015

  • Time-resolved confocal NIR microPL and macro (cuvette) PL spectroscopy available in our group for CFN user program (starting cycle 1 2016).
  • Prof. H Peter Lu from Bowling Green State University is doing a sabatical in our group.
  • Mircea presents lecture on CFN NIR imaging capabilities and gives CFN tour to WIRMS2015 participants.
  • Pradhald's work on polythiophene honeycombs is published as a cover article in the Oct.7th issue of Advanced Functional Materials. P.Routh, D.Nykypanchuk, T.Venkatesh and M.Cotlet. "Long Range Self-assembly of Polythiophene Breath Figures: Optical and Morphological Characterization"  Advanced Functional Materials 2015. link to cover.
  • We are co-organizers together with people form LANL and LLNL labs of the "Keller Symposium" at the i252nd ACS National Meeting on Aug.2016 in Philadelphia, PA. This Symposium will honor  Dr. Dick Keller's pioneering contributions to the field of  Single Molecule Detection under Ambient, Aqueous Conditions.

August 2015

  • Huidong's work on Qdots in electric field is accepted in Nanoscale and it is online. H.Zang, M.Cristea, M.Liu, X.Suen, F.Camino, M.Cotlet.
  • Dr. Huidong Zang is leaving our group for a new job at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. We wish him good luck with the new job and place and we thank him for his contribution to our group over the past three years.
  • After a long 8 weks of summer research, Dr. Zhihua Xu (U. Minnesota Duluth) and Dr. Mohamad Sohel (CUNY Hostos), both Summer VFPs,  will leave our group to return to their faculty posts. We wish them good luck with their research.

July 2015

  • The Fluotime FT200 is upgraded with InGaAs detector for 900-1450nm PL lifetime measurements. We also have new capability to measure long lifetimes, up to second time scale (TimeHarp260 nano hardware).

June 2015

  • We welcome Prof. Sohel's group from CUNY Hostos and Prof. Xu's group from University of Minnesota Duluth who will spend their summer doing research with us through the DOE VFP program.

May 2015

  • Plasmonic paper accepted in ACS Nano "Dazhi Sun, Ye Tian, Yugang Zhang, Zhihua Xu, Matthew Y. Sfeir, Mircea Cotlet*, and Oleg Gang*, Light Harvesting Nanoparticle Core-Shell Clusters with Controllable Optical Output, ACS Nano 2015
  • Mircea gives invited lecture at 2015 NY Biotech in Long Island

April 2015

  • Mircea gives invited seminar in the Applied Physics Department at Columbia University (IGERT Seminar).
  • Paper accepted in PhysChemChemPhys with our user/collaborators at LANL, Park, Liu, Routh et al. "DNA-assisted photoinduced charge transfer between a cationic poly(phenylene vinylene) and a cationic fullerene" -PCCP 2015
  • We welcome Jia-Shiang Chen from Materials Science Department at Stony Brook who will do his master thesis in our group.  Jia-Shiang is trained as a chemist.
  • SHG an 2 Photon imaging are available in CFN's Advanced Optical Microscopy facility.  

February 2015

  • Upgrades to Advanced Optical Microscopy facility coming August 2015, NIR&SWIR micro and macro PL including imaging and PL-based lifetimes.
  • Huidong, Prahlad and Mircea present posters at ARSC-CUNY opening in NYC.

January 2015

  • Mircea gives invited talk as Chemistry Department Colloquium at University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL.
  • BNL press release on the work reported by Dirk Englund's group in Nature Communications (see link)
  • Paper published in Nature Communication by CFN user Dirk Englund of MIT with part of work done in our facility "L.Li et al. Coherent spin control of a nanocavity-enhanced qubit in diamond", Nature Communications 2015

2014

December 2014

  • Paper published by our users of the advanced optical microscopy facility "T. Galfsky, H. N. S. Krishnamoorthy, W. Newman, E. E. Narimanov, Z. Jacob., and V. M. Menon, Active hyperbolic metamaterials: enhanced spontaneous emission and light extraction, In Press – Optica 2015.
  • Zhongwei successfully defends his PhD thesis to become Dr. Liu. Starting January 2015 Zhongwei will leave our group to assume a scientist position with ChemCubed, an R&D company in Long Island. Congratulation and good luck with the new job.

November 2014

Several papers published by our users of the advanced optical microscopy facility are listed below

  • M.Cargnello, B.T.Diroll, E.A.Gaulding, C.B.Murray, Enhanced Energy Transfer in Quasy-Quaternary Nanocrystal Supperlattices, Advanced Materials 2014, 26(15) 2419-2423.
  • Jilian Fan Chengshi Yan,Rebecca Roston,John Shanklin and Changcheng Xu, Arabidopsis Lipins, PDAT1 Acyltransferase, and SDP1 Triacylglycerol Lipase Synergistically Direct Fatty Acids toward β-Oxidation, Thereby Maintaining Membrane Lipid Homeostasis, The Plant Cell 2014, 26(10) 4119-34.
  • Rabeka Alam, Liliana M Karam, Tennyson L Doane, Joshua Zylstra, Danielle M Fontaine, Bruce R Branchini and Mathew M Maye, Near infrared bioluminescence resonance energy transfer from firefly luciferase—quantum dot bionanoconjugates, Nanotechnology 2014, 25, 495606

September 2014

A paper from P.Sutter' group with work done in part in our group has been accepted and appeared in ACS Nano,

  • Yuan Huang , Eli Sutter , Jerzy T. Sadowski , Mircea Cotlet , Oliver L.A. Monti , David A Racke , Mahesh R Neupane, Darshana Wickramaratne , Roger K. Lake , Bruce A Parkinson , and Peter Sutter, Tin Disulfide – An Emerging Layered Metal Dichalcogenide Semiconductor: Materials Properties and Device Characteristics.  ACS Nano 2014

August 2014

Huidong present his work on charge transfer at 2014 Fall ACS Meeting in San Jose, CA and at Gordon Conference on Energy Materials in Newport, RI. 

July 2014

Zhongwei's work on conjugated polymer/DNA interaction is accepted in Chem.Comm:

  • Zhongwei Liu, Hsing Lin Wang and Mircea Cotlet, DNA sequence-dependent photoluminescence enhancement in a cationic conjugated polyelectrolyte. Chem.Comm.2014

May 2014

  • Huidong's paper in Chem.Comm. (hole transfer) is awarded Front Cover of JUNE edition. The cover can be found at this link.
  • A paper from Chee Wei Wong's group at Columbia University with work done in part in our single molecule facility has been published in Applied Physics Letters,

    • O. A. Ajayi, N. C. Anderson, M. Cotlet, N. Petrone, T. Gu, A. Wolcott, F. Gesuele, J. Hone, J. S. Owen and C. W. Wong, Time-resolved energy transfer from single chloride-terminated nanocrystals to graphene, APL, 104, 171101 (2014). (link)

April 2014

  • Prahlad wins Best Poster Award for Graduate Students at the Advanced Energy Conference 2014 (ADTEC 2014) in Albany NY on his work on transparent polymer films. Congratulation Prahlad.
  • Zhongwei wins travel award from SIGMA XI Stony Brook Chapter for MRS 2014 Spring in San Francisco, CA. Congratulations Zhongwei.
  • Zhongwei presents lecture at MRS 2014 in San Francisco.
  • Mircea is promoted to Materials Scientist with indefinite appointment (tenure).
  • BNL news release on Zhongwei's work on DNA sensing with conjugated polyelectrolytes (see link)
  • Zhongwei's work on DNA sensors is accepted in ACS Chemistry of Materials: Zhongwei Liu, Hsing Lin Wang and Mircea Cotlet, Energy transfer from a conjugated polymer to an intercalated DNA: towards label free, sequence specific DNA sensing. (link) Congratulation Zhongwei. 

March 2014

  • Prahlad presents at 2014 American Chemical Society Meeting in Dallas, TX

February 2014

  • Mircea gives Colloquium talk at CFN on his work on charge transfer in quantum dot hybrids.
  • CFN user work (C.J. Liu's group from BNL Biology) published in Nature Communication and using our confocal (advanced optical microscopy facility) is highlighted on the BNL website (link) .
  • Mircea's interview by the Romanian National Public Television onsite at BNL is now on Youtube (sorry but this is in Romanian) (link).
  • CFN user article published (advanced optical microscopy facility) K.Zhang, O.Novak, Z.Wei, M.Gou, X.Zhang, Y.Yu, H.Yang, Y.Cai, M.Strnad & C.-J.Liu, Arabidopsis ABCG14 protein controls the acropetal translocation of root-synthesized cytokinins, Nature Communications 2014, 5, 3274, doi:10.1038/ncomms4274. (link)

January 2014

  • Stony Brook University features our work on core-size dependent hole transfer recently published in  (link) 
  • CFN user Fan Jillian part of a research team awarded Top 10 BNL Scientific Discoveries of 2013 (PI Changcheng Xu), with work done in part in our Advanced Optical Microscopy facility on one of the confocals.

2013

December 2013

  • BNL press release on the work published with Syracuse (link)
  • A single molecule paper from our group has been accepted in Chem.Comm, H.Zang, P.K.Routh, R.Alam, M.Maye, M.Cotlet, Core size dependent hole transfer from a photoexcited QD to a conductive polymer. Chem.Comm. ASAP Dec. 2013, work done in collaboration with Prof. Maye's group at Syracuse.
  • CFN user article published (advanced optical microscopy facility) X.Zhang, M.Gou, C-J.Liu, Arabidopsis Kelch repeat F-Box proteins regulate phenylpropanoid biosynthesis via controlling the turnover of phenylaniline ammonia-lyase, The Plant Cell, Dec. 2013, ASAP, DOI/10.1105/tpc.113.119644.

November 2013

  • Zhongwei wins Best Poster Award at the 2013 Young Researcher Symposium at BNL on his work on polymer/DNA biosensing. Congratulation ! (link).
  • CFN user article published in NanoLetters (advanced optical microscopy facility): Matthew E. Trusheim, Luozhou Li, Abdelghani Laraoui, Edward H. Chen, Hassaram Bakhru, Tim Schröder, Ophir Gaathon, Carlos A. Meriles, and Dirk Englund, Scalable Fabrication of High Purity Diamond Nanocrystals with Long-Spin-Coherence Nitrogen Vacancy Centers, NanoLetters ASAP Nov.2013.

October 2013

  • CFN user articles published  (advanced optical microscopy facility) : J.Fan, C.Yan, X.Zhang, C.Xu, Dual Role for Phospholipid:Diacylglycerol Acyltransferase: Enhancing Fatty Acid Synthesis and Diverting Fatty Acids from Membrane Lipids to Triacylglycerol in Arabidopsis Leave, The Plant Cell, 2013 ASAP.
  • A single molecule article by H.Zang, Z.Xu and M.Cotlet, Core-size dependent photoluminescence blinking of isolated quantum dot - fullerene hybrids accepted in the Special Issue on Measuring Single Molecules in Biophysics Reviews and Letters

September 2013

  • CFN user articles published  (advanced optical microscopy facility): J.Fan, C.Yan, C.Xu, Phospholipid:diacylglycerol acyltransferase-mediated triacylglycerol biosynthesis is crucial for protection against fatty acid-induced cell death in growing tissues of Arabidopsis, The Plant Journal, 2013 ASAP
  • Zhongwei and Huidong present posters at the Stony Brook University's Postdoc/graduate student Research Symposium.
  • Mircea gives invited lecture and chairs session at the 19th Single Molecule Spectroscopy Workshop in Berlin, Germany.
  • Mircea visits Chemistry Department at CUNY Queens College in NY and gives Department Colloquium lecture.

July 2013

  • Zhongwei presents poster with his work on biosensing at the Stony Brook Symposium on Supramolecular Materials.

June 2013

  • CFN user articles published  (advanced optical microscopy facility): Rabeka Alam, Joshua Zylstra, Danielle M. Fontaine, Bruce R. Branchini and Mathew M. Maye, Novel multistep BRET-FRET energy transfer using nanoconjugates of firefly proteins, quantum dots, and red fluorescent proteins, Nanoscale, 2013, 5, 5303-5306
  • Mircea gives invited lecture and chairs session on nanophotonics at CLEO 2013 in San Jose, CA.

May 2013

  • CFN user articles published  (advanced optical microscopy facility): Luozhou Li, Matthew Trusheim, Ophir Gaathon, Kim Kisslinger, Ching-Jung Cheng, Ming Lu, Dong Su, Xinwen Yao, Hsu-Cheng Huang, Igal Bayn, Abraham Wolcott, Richard M. Osgood, Jr., and Dirk Englund, Reactive ion etching: Optimized diamond membrane fabrication for transmission electron microscopy, J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B 31, 06 FF01 (2013)
  • Congratulation to Xuyi Wang for successful defending her Master thesis. Xuyi will leave the group to assume a new position as an analytical chemist with a Long Island chemical manufacturer company.
  • Congratulation to Brian Wang for successful defending his master thesis and good luck with the job hunting. 
  • Huidong gives oral presentation about his latest single molecule results on charge transfer at the NSLS/CFN 2013 workshop " in Brookhaven.
  • The NSLS/CFN 2013 workshop "Single Molecule Microscopy Tools for Life Sciences and Materials Sciences" was a success. The meeting included excellent bio-related talks from Prof. Haw Yang (Princeton), Prof. Patrick Doyle (MIT), Prof. Ji Yu (U.Connecticut), Prof. Jin Wang (SBU) and Prof. S.Jang (CUNY) and materials science related talks from Prf. Stefan Strauf (Stevens), Prof. Chee-wei Wong (Columbia) and Prof. Drik Englund (MIT) and a tour of the CFN single molecule facility. 

April 2013

  • Prof. Tim Lian from Chemistry Department at Emory University visits CFN and presents CFN Colloquium lecture.

March 2013

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

2012

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

February 2012

  • CFN user article published  (advanced optical microscopy facility) "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  (advanced optical microscopy facility) "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

2011

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   (advanced optical microscopy facility) "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  (advanced optical microscopy facility) "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  (advanced optical microscopy facility)  "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  (advanced optical microscopy facility) "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"

2010

December 2010

November 2010

  • CFN user article published  (advanced optical microscopy facility) "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.
  • 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

September 2010

  • Mircea presents single molecule research in a department colloquium series for graduate students at Stony Brook, MS&E.

August 2010

July 2010

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  (advanced optical microscopy facility) "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

January 2010

2009

November 2009

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 

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.

2008

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.  

2007

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 develop a research program focused on functional hybrid nanomaterials for light harvesting, plasmonic and biosensing applications.