Self-assembling block copolymers provide a simple, efficient, and rapid way to generate nanoscale patterns over macroscopic areas:Â’  for example, an array of 20 nm dots covering a 100 mm silicon wafer.Â’  These dots can be "lined up" by applying shear to the block copolymer film [1], but the order is not perfect:Â’  dislocations (lines of dots that abruptly start or end) remain in the film.Â’  In a recent study [2], PCCM researchers have shown that the quality of orientational order of the dots depends only on the density of these dislocations; in the limit that dislocations are

MRSEC faculty members Paul Crowell, Chris Leighton, and Dan Dahlberg and their students guided 25 high school students through an exploration of magnetism and its applications to technology as part of the Institute of Technology Center for Education Programs (ITCEP) Exploring Careers in Science & Engineering summer camp. The day of activities included hands-on demos, a lunch with recent graduates working in industry, and an afternoon spent building motors, magnetic levitators, generators, and radios.

The UMN MRSEC has demonstrated the control of nanocrystal orientation within nanoporous polymer monoliths prepared from ABC triblock terpolymers containing a robust A block (polystyrene), a hydrophilic B block [poly(dimethylacrylamide)], and an etchable C block (polylactide) developed in the IRG.

Mr. Chin-Yi Liu, a graduate student working in Professor Kortshagen’s group, demonstrated the first hybrid solar cell based on silicon nanocrystals and a conductive polymer, poly-3(hexylthiophene) (P3HT). 

One of the challenges in developing robust multilayers is the need to predict the interfacial strength between hard and soft materials. For example, in the case of drug eluting stents that are being used increasingly to treat arteriosclerosis, there are concerns that the drug-eluting layer may detach from the polymeric layers that are used to attach the soft drug eluting layers to the hard metallic stent substrate.

Technology based on fundamental studies carried out within our MRSEC is now saving lives at hospitals across the country: over 175 novel endoscopic surgical procedures per week are being carried out across 250 medical facilities in the U. S. using high-power laser radiation delivered by OmniGuide photonic fibers.

A collaboration between researchers funded by the DOE and NSF-supported MRSEC and CHM at UC Berkeley and UMASS Amherst has led to a breakthrough in the areal density of templates derived from block copolymers (BCPs) having orientational registry over macroscopic distances. The facets on a reconstructed single crystal surface, like sapphire, were used to guide and direct the self-assembly of BCPs having 3 nm cylindrical domains over arbitrarily large surfaces. Grazing incidence x-ray scattering (GISAXS) quantitatively demonstrated