Creating Nanostructures through Self- and Directed Assembly
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Date: 09-21-2005
Start Time:
4:00pm
End Time: 5:00pm
Speaker: P. S. Weiss
From:
Penn State University
Location: Interschool lab - 7th floor - CEPSR
Hosted by:
Center for Integrated Science
Abstract:
We use intermolecular interactions and selective chemistry to direct
molecules into desired positions to create nanostructures, to connect
functional molecules to the outside world, and to serve as test
structures for measurements of single or bundled molecules. Interactions
within and between molecules can be measured, understood and exploited at
unprecedented scales. We look at how these interactions influence the
chemistry, dynamics, structure, and other properties. Such interactions
can be used to advantage to form precise molecular assemblies,
nanostructures, and patterns. These nanostructures can be taken all the
way down to atomic-scale precision or can be used at larger scales. We
select molecules to choose the intermolecular interaction strength and
the structures formed within the film. We selectively test hypothesized
mechanisms for electronic switching by varying molecular design, chemical
environment, and measurement conditions to enable or to disable functions
and control of these molecules with predictive and testable means.
Critical to understanding these variations has been developing the means
to make tens to hundreds of thousands of independent single-molecule
measurements in order to develop sufficiently significant statistical
distributions, comparable to those found in ensemble-averaging
measurements, while retaining the heterogeneity of the measurements.