TechConnect - The Nano Issue

New
Frontiers

writinG by ::
christopher di virGiLio

Universities’ centers will
research alternative
energy sources

rizona has been
selected as home
of two new Energy
Frontier Research
Centers (EFRC)
established as
part of an effort to accelerate sci-
entific advances needed to build a
21st century energy economy.

The center at Arizona State University—one of 46 named nationwide by the U.S Department of Energy—will pursue advanced scientific research on solar energy conversion based on the principles of photosynthesis. The goal is to use sunlight to convert water cheaply and efficiently into hydrogen fuel and oxygen.

“Our goal is to produce fuel using the energy from the sun,” says Devens Gust, ASU professor of chemistry and biochemistry. “We will strive to take the essence of photosynthesis and apply it to human needs.”

DOE will fund $14 million over a five-year period.

For the past 15 years, ASU scientists and researchers have been studying the various characteristics of the photosynthetic process, uncovering its chemistry and biochemistry as a way to design and construct solar energy harvesting components based on this fundamental science.

The other center in the state will be at The University of Arizona. Researchers at the Center for Interface Science: Hybrid Solar-Electric Materials (CIS:HSEM) will collaborate with ASU researchers as they study ways to develop flexible, ultra-thin photovoltaic collectors, or solar panels, that can be easily and cheaply installed. The team will be working with materials in the nanometer-length scale and hope to develop long-life solar energy conversion devices.

“We look forward to being the lead institution for CIS:HSEM and to working with our partner institutions,” says Director Neil R. Armstrong, a UofA professor of optical sciences. “The science of interfaces between different organic and inorganic materials is at the heart of the development of new Generation III photovoltaic technologies.”

GETTING DOWN TO THE ROOTs
Peering deeper into the internal structures of solid materials promises
panorama of possibilities for technological advances

writinG by :: Joe KuLLman

ou can see how
materials and
chemicals bond
at the most
fundamental
levels. You can see how the
structure of one kind of atom
mates up with the structure
of other kinds of atoms,” says
Ray Carpenter, a professor at
Arizona State University’s School
of Materials.

When you can look that close, “you really get down to the roots of the basic properties of materials,” explains Nathan Newman, director of ASU’s LeRoy Eyring Center for Solid State Science. Getting that perspective reveals a lot about how the electrical and mechanical properties of materials can best be applied to improving technologies.

ASU soon will be able to offer scientists, engineers and industry researchers such illuminating views. The university’s reputation for leading-edge microscopy research and education has helped win a $4.7 million National Science Foundation grant that will enable ASU to obtain two new state-of-the-art electron microscopes for its J.M. Cowley Center for High Resolution Electron Microscopy in the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering.

The new equipment will help researchers accelerate

progress on producing the next generations of photovoltaic cells, semiconductors, computer logic, electronic memory and communications technologies, Newman says.

These “technologically revolutionary” microscopes are “invaluable tools for the future success of nanoscience and nanotechnology, which are fields critical to both national security and economic development,” he says.

Adds Carpenter: “We will be able to probe the bonding of single atoms and examine chemical reactions in real time at the atomic level. This is the level at which the workings of nanotechnology happen.”

Carpenter says such capabilities enhance the potential for more effectively using nanoparticles as catalysts for energy-production systems, batteries for alternative-fuel vehicle, and materials that convert sunlight into electrical energy more efficiently.

What makes them special is that they are aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopes, specifically designed to prevent even the tiniest blurring of microscopic images.

ASU’s grant marks the first time the National Science Foundation is supporting acquisition of such a microscope by a university facility. ASU will

join the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (operated by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy) as the only places in the western United States to have such advanced electron microscopes.

The microscopes will draw researchers to ASU not only from other universities but from leading industry research operations, and enable them to produce advances that will translate into rich opportunities for industrial innovation and economic development, Newman says.

The new technology also will enable ASU to boost the quality of its science education in microscopy.

The electron microscopes use detectors that digitize data, so the images provided by the microscopes can be linked to the Internet.

“We can record experiments or do live presentations of experiments in action and use them for presentations to students in university and high school classrooms,” Carpenter says.

Anywhere in the world where schools can provide a computer and digital projector, he says, “we can help teach classes by sending images from real research being done at the atomic level.”