OISE-0834047 U.S.-France Planning Visit: Nanostructured Iron Oxides: Nature?s Signature of Environmental Change
This proposal will fund a six day visit to France for a team of U.S. researchers to develop a joint research proposal with French colleagues dealing with natural iron oxide nanoparticles that act as sensitive recorders of climate- and human-induced environmental changes. The U.S. team includes Dr. Lee Penn, Dr. Subir Banerjee, a junior research associate and two graduate students for the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, as well as two colleagues from the University of California. The French team is led by Professor Philippe Sainctavit of the University of Paris. The U.S. participants are experts in nanoparticle chemistry, synthesis, magnetism, and crystallography. The French participants are experts in X-ray magnetic circular dichroism and neutron scattering. These latter techniques can provide powerful tests for unique magnetic spin orientations in the outermost 'shells' of the iron oxide nanoparticles. The U.S. team is developing a central hypothesis dealing with the idea of a core-shell magnetic and chemical structure of the iron oxide nanoparticles, and elucidating that structure and its impact on the chemical behavior (e.g., redox chemistry at nanoparticle surfaces) of iron nanoparticles is critical to the development of precise descriptions of magnetic and chemical changes brought about by environmental changes. Thus, the collaboration should lead to the first complete magnetic and chemical description enabling rigorous interpretations of current magnetic observations in soils and sediments in terms of past major changes in rainfall and temperature. Such quantitative interpretations are needed to act as benchmarks for testing numerical regional climate change models now being developed in the United States and elsewhere.
