This Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Site focuses on characterization of advanced materials. Under the supervision of faculty from Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Chemistry, and Civil Engineering, undergraduate student participants utilize tools such as electron microscopy, scanning probe microscopy, infrared spectroscopy, nanoindentation, and other methods to understand the relationships between the processing, structure and properties of a wide range of materials. Ten undergraduate students, including freshmen and sophomores, from a wide variety of disciplines and schools are recruited nationwide every year for the ten-week summer research experience. The Site also adds new faculty members over its life to encourage starting faculty to provide significant undergraduate research experiences.
In addition to independent projects, students participate in a series of short workshops on research skills and presentation skills to enhance their ability to communicate their work to broad audiences. Research projects are presented at a campus-wide poster session at the end of the summer with up to 100 participants.
This REU Site is suppported by the Department of Defense in partnership with the NSF REU program.
Over the four years of the grant there were 34 students brought to WSU to participate in our REU program on Characterization of Advanced Materials. Out of these, only 4 were from WSU - one per year to help the outside students acclimate quickly to our campus. The students lived together in a large house along with other undergraduate researchers involved in different disciplines. This multi-disciplinary "community of scholars" approach lead to the students learning about one anothers research and allowed them to use tools and techniques from other labs than those that were directly available to them through their advisors. At the end of every summer there was a poster session where all students presented their work. Our posters from the MSE section are shown on websites dedicated to that purpose (see below). Nineteen out of the 34 students who participate in the program were from under-represented groups and/or were women. 10 out of the 34 were Freshmen or Sophomores who were doing research for the first time, and several of the Juniors and Seniors were also participating in research for the first time. Out of our MSE students, 28/34 indicated that they had a positive experience at WSU and 16 indicated that they were more likely to attend graduate school after their REU experience. Out of the 34 students, 11 have published papers with 1 additional paper currently under review and 2 papers in preparation. Four other students presented their research at national meetings such as MS&T, SACNAS National Convention, and National NOBCChE Meeting. So far, 22 out of 24 students who participated in our program have completed an undergraduate degree in MSE or a related field and 14 have gone on to graduate school. One student is deceased and another dropped out of school and we lost contact with him. The other 10 students are still pursuing undergraduate degrees. Journal Papers A Pranda, K. Kelvin, P.C. Wo and Z.F. Zhou (2015). Nanoindentation and SEM Characterization of DLC/Cr Multilayer Coating on CoCrMo. Materials Sci. Eng. A. Abdolreza Jahanbekam, Sara Vorpahl, Ursula Mazur, and K W Hipps (2013). Temperature Stability of Three Commensurate Surface Structures of Coronene Adsorbed on Au (111) from Hepatnoic Acid in the 10ºC to 60ºC Range. J. Phys. Chem. C. 117 2914. B. Lively, P. Smith, W. Wood, R. Maguire and W.H. Zhong (2012). Quantified Stereological Macro-dispersion Analysis of Polymer Nanocomposites. Composites Part A. 43 847. Eskelsen, J. R.; Phillips, K. J.; Hipps, K. W.; Mazur (2015). Hyperbranched crystalline nanostructure produced from ionic π-conjugated molecules. Chem. Commun. 51 2663. Eskelsen, J. R.; Qi, Y.; Schneider-Pollack, S.; Schmitt, S.; Hipps, K. W.; Mazur, U. (2014). Correlating elastic properties and molecular organization of an ionic organic nanostructure. Nanoscale. 6 316. J. Bair, S. Hatch and DP Field (2014). Formation of annealing twin boundaries in nickel. Scripta Mater. 81 52. Jeremy R. Eskelsen, Yingte Wang, Yun Qi, Monali Ray, Mzuri Handlin, K. W. Hipps, and Ursula Mazur (2012). Protonation State of Core Nitrogens in the Meso-tetra(4-carboxyphenyl)porphyrin Impacts the Chemical and Physical Properties of Nanostructures Formed in Acid Solutions. Journal of Porphyrins and Phthalocyanines. 16 1233. Michelle Tsui, Zhuoyuan Zheng, Veronica Perez, Bin Li, Weihong Zhong, (). Dispersion and Property Enhancement of Polycarbonate/Graphite Nanoplatelets Nanocomposites via Soy Protein Based Surfactant. Journal of Nanomaterials. . Ross Kerner, Yilin Li, Louis Scudiero (2012). Physical, Optical and Electronic Properties of a New Donor-Acceptor-Donor Oligomer for Solar Cell Applications. Synthetic Metals. Conference Papers and Presentations Mark Bartolo, S.M. Mortuza, and S. Banerjee (2013). Modeling Donor-Acceptor Copolymers Used in the Photoactive Layer of Organic Photovoltaic Cells. UCSD Summer Research Conference. San Diego, CA. SM Mortuza, Mark Dela Cruz Bartolo, and Soumik Banerjee (2013). Molecular modeling of nanoparticles and conjugated polymers during synthesis of photoactive layers of organic photovoltaic solar cells. AICHE Annual Meeting. San Francisco. CG Parker, DP Field (2012). Observation of Structure Evolution during Annealing of 7xxx Series Al Deformed at High Temperature. TMS Annual Meeting, Light Metals. Pittsburgh, PA. B. Lively, P. Smith, W.H. Zhong (2012). Stereological Macrodispersion Analysis: Industry Applicable Quality Assessment of Nanocomposite. SAMPE 2012. Baltimore, MD. Websites to view poster presentations http://reu.mme.wsu.edu/2011/ http://reu.mme.wsu.edu/2012/ http://reu.mme.wsu.edu/2013/ http://reu.mme.wsu.edu/2014/
