Technical Description: This project examines the use of controllable nanoscale local strain to chemically pattern metal-oxide-crystal surfaces. It investigates and exploits local stress formed by careful, low-energy surface implantation of rare gases to controllably vary surface reactivity. Thus a high-resolution nanoscale template of nanometer-scale buried-atom clusters creates the needed patterned strain in the surface layers of metal oxides. Strain-induced reactions or change in surface reactivity is observed in several systems of interest to the materials chemistry of electronic materials or even more generally, for use in oxides for catalysis. While the main focus of the research project examines the use of this effect as a method of nanoscale chemical patterning on the oxide surface, the project has the broader implication of enhancing our knowledge of oxide, nanoscale surface chemistry and its control.
Non-technical Description: This project is in the general areas of nanopatterning and complex-oxide surface chemical reactions; this is an area of broad impact for many technologies including surface functionalization for advanced sensors in medical and biological science, and patterning for nanosystem devices. The research is integrated into the education mission of Columbia University. First, the project enables initiation of a new hands-on early graduate student program: entitled Jump-Start; this program provides an opportunity to learn via mentoring, material preparation, and teaching the advanced techniques need for modern experimental research in oxide materials. Second, the project has concrete plans and procedures to seek out recruitment of diverse students. Recruitment is done via outreach talks to undergrads at Columbia and via active participation in the undergraduate research opportunities program (UROP) at Columbia. Third, the project enables students to collaborate, via extended visits and shorter trips, with a major US and an Italian national laboratory, i.e. the new Brookhaven Center for Functional Nanomaterials and the ELETTRA synchrotron source in Trieste.
