The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.
This award will support a twenty-two-month research fellowship by Dr. Ilke Arslan to work with Dr. Paul A. Midgley at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
Recent advances in nanotechnology have challenged electron microscopy to become more quantitative in determining the composition, size, shape, and electronic properties of individual nanostructures. Traditional techniques in scanning transmission electron microscopy have been developed to obtain two dimensional projected atomic structures, but to truly understand the effect of size and shape on the properties of nanomaterials, the three dimensional structure must be ascertained. This is now possible in the electron microscope using electron tomography. While electron tomography has been used for biological materials for many years, the application of Z-contrast (incoherent) imaging for materials systems is very new and only slowly becoming available in a few institutions worldwide. This project is using Z-contrast tomography to study several key nanoscale systems such as catalysts, quantum dots, and microelectronic devices. With 1nm resolution in three dimensions (with the resolution continually improving as the technique develops) and a field of view of hundreds of nanometers, new insights are being gained into the three dimensional structure-property relationships of novel devices and structures at the nanoscale.
