Running Like 60!

ust before the end of a very tough winter, one excellent Ph.D. student in Prof. Richard Osgood's group achieved an important milestone. He became the 60th student to graduate from Osgood's intellectually diverse group of enthusiastic scientists.

The student, Dr. Zhisheng Li, a graduate from China's University of Science and Technology, majored in materials science and, in particular, studied the chemistry of materials science. In his thesis work, Dr. Li specialized in examining key metal oxides. This work, which involved a close collaboration with Dr. Denis Potapenko, was recently published in the prestigious journal ACS Nano.

TiO₂, changes its chemistry when it is in a "nanocrystal" form. TiO₂ is an important material and is used in both very technical and very basic applications - from advanced solar cells, to chemical catalysis, to house paint. Dr. Li's thesis talk focused a new basic observation -  that nanoscale reactions on TiO₂ are very sensitive to the degree of strain on the surface of a crystal. Dr. Li and Dr. Potapenko used the powerful technique of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), which enables imaging of individual molecules and atoms on the surface of a crystal. Throughout his graduate work, Dr. Li was extraordinarily productive and published six papers!

Richard M. Osgood, Jr. is the Higgins Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering and Professor Emeritus of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics.

Original article here.