Research - Highlights

2008

Moore elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Prof. Jeffrey Moore (Chemistry) has been elected as a fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences among 190 new members for 2008.

Rogers appointed as first chair for engineering innovation
Prof. John Rogers (MatSE) has been appointed as the first Lee J. Flory — Founder Chair in Engineering Innovation, with an investiture to be held in the fall.

Spring awards to MRL researchers
A number of MRL researchers have won awards in the spring of 2008. These include Prof. John Rogers (MatSE) appointed as an inaugural MRS Fellow, Assoc. Prof. Jim Zuo (MatSE) recognized as part of the Oversea Chinese Young Scholar Joint Research Fund, several Physics and MatSE professors being named APS Outstanding Referees and more.

Science: Foldable and strechable, silicon circuits conform to many shapes
Further work from Prof. John Rogers (MatSE) has improved upon his group's ground-breaking stretchable "wavy" silicon designs to create a sophisticated and even more flexible stretchable integrated circuit.

New kind of transistor radios show capability of nanotube technology
Prof. John Rogers (MatSE) along with collaborators at Northrop Grumman Electronics Systems have built the world's first all-nanotube transistor radios as demonstration of their novel growth technique and the potential for nanotube usage in high-speed analog electronics.

2007

Suslick awarded 2007 Sir George Stokes Medal
Prof. Kenneth Suslick (Chemistry) has been awarded the 2007 Sir George Stokes Medal by the Royal Society of Chemistry for contributions to analytical science of importance to chemical analysis.

MRL Joins DOE Solar America Initiative
An MRL proposal led by Prof. John Rogers (MatSE) as PI and co-PIs Ralph Nuzzo (Chemistry) and Jennifer Lewis (MatSE) has been selected for funding through the DOE Solar America Initiative.

MRL Staff Volunteers on Solar Decathlon Project
FS-MRL Central Facilities staff member Steve Burdin has volunteered numerous hours working on the Illinois entry in DOE's 2007 Solar Decathlon, an international competition amongst university student teams to design, build, and operate extremely efficient solar-powered houses.

Schweizer awarded 2008 APS Polymer Physics Prize
FS-MRL Principal Investigator Kenneth Schweizer (MatSE) has been recognized as the 2008 recipient of the Polymer Physics Prize of the American Physical Society.

TEAM Microscope Demonstrates Record 0.5Å Spatial Resolution
FS-MRL and partners in the Transmission Electron Aberration-corrected Microscope project (TEAM) have met a major goal ahead of schedule by demonstrating 0.5Å resolution from the next generation TEAM 0.5 spherical aberration corrected electron microscope.

Nature Materials: Improved e-jet printing provides higher resolution and more versatility
FS-MRL PI John Rogers (MatSE) and colleagues have created superior new methods for liquid printing by combining electrically induced fluid flow with nanoscale nozzles. The work has been accepted to the journal Nature Materials and is currently posted on its website.

Science: Ultrafast laser spectrometer measures heat flow through molecules
Work by Professors Dana Dlott (Chemistry) & David Cahill (MatSE) to develop an ultrafast thermal measurement technique capable of exploring heat transport in extended molecules has been published in the journal Science.

Rogers bestowed the 2007 Baekeland Award
FS-MRL PI John Rogers (MatSE) has been selected to receive the 2007 Baekeland Award, presented by the North Jersey Section of the American Chemical Society to a top American chemist under 40 years old.

Lewis named director of Materials Research Laboratory
Professor Jennifer A. Lewis (MatSE) has been named the sixth director of the Seitz Materials Research Laboratory.

Inverse woodpile structure has extremely large photonic band gap
FS-MRL PIs Paul Braun (MatSE) and Jennifer Lewis (MatSE) describe the fabrication and optical properties of a germanium inverse woodpile structure in an upcoming issue of the journal Advanced Materials.

Rogers group introduces "wavy" silicon
FS-MRL PI John Rogers (MatSE) and group have demonstrated a new method for creating sheets of silicon capable of stretching in two dimensions. The work has been published online at Nano Letters.

New model describes avalanche behavior of superfluid helium
FS-MRL PI Paul Goldbart (Physics) and group have constructed a new model to describe the avalanche-like, phase-slip cascades in the superflow of helium, recently published in Physical Review Letters.

Theory predicts aging process in DVDs, plexiglas, other polymer glasses
FS-MRL PI Ken Schweizer (MatSE) and group present a new theory in Physical Review Letters on how polymer glasses age and why molecular level motion can have macroscopic effects.

Nature: Mechanics meets chemistry in new ways to manipulate matter
FS-MRL PIs Jeffrey Moore (Chemistry) and Nancy Sottos (MatSE) are featured as a 'Letter to Nature' as well as provide the cover art for the March 22, 2007 issue of Nature with their work on using mechanical force to affect the process of chemical reactions.

Rogers earns 2007 Drucker Eminent Faculty Award
FS-MRL PI John Rogers (MatSE) has been awarded the 2007 Daniel C. Drucker Eminent Faculty Award by Tau Beta Pi's Illinois Alpha chapter, among the highest awards given within the UIUC College of Engineering.

Zukoski elected to National Academy of Engineering
FS-MRL PI and campus Vice Chancellor for Research Charles F. Zukoski (ChemEng) has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering, among the highest professional distinctions in engineering.

Scientists identify molecular cause for one form of deafness
FS-MRL PI Gerard Wong (MatSE) and collaborators have found an underlying molecular cause for one form of deafness, and a conceptual connection between deafness and the organization of liquid crystals, recently published in Physical Review Letters.

Water theory is watertight, researchers say
FS-MRL PI Steve Granick (MatSE) and collaborators recently published findings in Physical Review Letters confirming a theoretical model of how water interacts with hydrophobic surfaces.

2006

Science: 3D heterogeneous systems are a key to the next generation of electronics
FS-MRL PIs Ralph Nuzzo (Chemistry) and John Rogers (MatSE) were feaured in the December 15, 2006 issue of Science magazine describing their fabrication and operation of electronics combining disparate types of semiconductor devices.

Science: Complex order parameter in ruthenate superconductors confirmed
FS-MRL PI Dale Van Harlingen (Physics) along with graduate students and a collaborator from Kyoto University published an article in the November 24th issue of Science confirming the pairing symmetry of strontium ruthenium oxide.

Martinez elected among 2006 AAAS Fellows
FS-MRL PI Todd Martinez (Chemistry) was among 10 faculty members elected to the 2006 class of AAAS Fellows by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, publisher of the journal Science and the world's largest general scientific society.

Hattar image chosen as Materials Today 2006 Cover Competition winner
Ph.D. student Khalid Hattar's TEM image has been selected as the 2006 Cover Competition winner for the journal Materials Today.

Nuzzo and Rogers Plasmonic Crystal work published in PNAS, featured at Nature Nanotechnology
FS-MRL PIs Ralph Nuzzo (Chemistry) and John Rogers (MatSE) along with their groups and collaborators at Argonne National Laboratory were recently published in PNAS then featured on the website for new journal Nature Nanotechnology for their work on quasi-3D plasmonic crystals.

Suslick Breaks Sugar with Sound to get Light
As reported in the November 9th issue of Nature, FS-MRL PI & Cluster Leader Ken Suslick (Chemistry) along with graduate student Nathan Eddingsaas have used high-intensity ultrasound in liquid slurries of sugar and other organic crystals to create mechanoluminescence up to 1000 times more intense than from grinding.

Chiang group work on Quantum Coherence featured in Science
Tai Chiang's (Physics) group was featured in the November 3 issue of Science for their work with atomically uniform silver films, demonstrating that quantum coherence is possible in noncommensurate electronic systems.

New Theory Explains Enhanced Superconductivity in Nanowires
FSMRL PI's Alexey Bezryadin (Physics) and Paul Goldbart (Physics) have discovered an unusual phenomenon and explanative theory for enhanced superconductivity exhibited by ultra-narrow wires exposed to strong magnetic fields.

Semprius Inc. wins a WSJ Technology Innovation Award
Semprius Inc. has won a 2006 Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award in the Semiconductors category for a process for making large-scale, high-performance electronic circuits that can be applied to any surface.

Ultrafast Lasers in Materials Research
FSMRL PI David Cahill (MatSE) served as a Guest Editor for the August 2006 issue of MRS Bulletin and co-authored the title theme article.

Self-Avoiding Flexible Polymers under Spherical Confinement
The May 2006 issue of Nano Letters features the work of Erik Luijten (MatSE) and post-doc Angelo Cacciuto on polymers under confinement.

L. Greene & D. Ceperley elected to National Academy of Science
Professors Laura Greene (Physics) & David Ceperley (Physics) were elected to the NAS in April 2006.

Stretchable Silicon Recognized Among Top 10 Emerging Technologies
One of the technologies chosen for this year's MIT Technology Review 'top 10 emerging technologies' is John Rogers' (MatSE) work on stretchable silicon.

Salamon featured in Nature article
Researchers at Illinois and Los Alamos National Laboratory studying the material CeRhIn5 have demonstrated that its magnetic state can coexist with another state- superconductivity- in a certain range of temperature and pressure.

Lewis featured on cover of Soft Matter
Work by Professor Jennifer Lewis's (MatSE) group is featured on the cover of the March 7th, 2006 issue of Soft Matter.

Controlling the Thermal Stability of Thin Films by Interfacial Engineering
A comparison of Pb films prepared on Si(111) surfaces terminated by various metals (interfactants) demonstrates that the phase of the thickness-dependent film thermal stability oscillations can be controlled through interfacial engineering. While films made of an odd number of atomic layers are more stable than even ones in the Pb/In/Si(111) system, this trend is reversed when Au and Pb serve as interfactants. This behavior arises from the different phase shifts experienced by the confined Pb electrons at the substrate interface.

2005

Stretchable silicon could be next wave in electronics
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a fully stretchable form of single-crystal silicon with micron-sized, wave-like geometries that can be used to build high-performance electronic devices on rubber substrates.

Martinez named MacArthur Fellow
Prof. Todd Martinez (Chemistry) has been named a 2005 MacArthur Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Dislocation-driven Nanoscale Surface pattern Formation: Atomic Volcanoes and Whirl Pools in Crystals
Progress in nanoscience and technology depends on the ability to systematically organize, manipulate, and characterize matter at the nanoscale, which can only be achieved through "bottom-up" processes, i.e. by self-organized assembly of atoms and molecules.

Nuzzo elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Prof. Ralph G. Nuzzo (Chemistry) is one of two professors at UIUC elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005.

Polyelectrolyte Inks for Direct Writing of 3-D Microperiodic Structures
Direct-write assembly of 3D microwebs comprised of charged polyelectrolyte filaments has been demonstrated using fluid inks that readily flow through fine deposition nozzles (~ 1 μm diameter or less), and then rapidly solidify in a coagulation reservoir.

Nanoparticle Mediated Colloidal Epitaxy Yields Crack-free Colloidal Crystals
We have performed a fundamental study of the epitaxial assembly of crack-free 3-D colloidal crystals containing very low vacancy concentrations from binary mixtures of colloidal microspheres and highly charged nanoparticles into patterned substrates created by focused ion beam milling.

Coherent X-ray Diffraction from Cubic Silver Single Nanocrystals
The use of microfocus techniques has allowed us to extend synchrotron x-ray-based nanocrystal imaging work to significantly smaller length scales.

2004

Imaging Single, Individual Macromolecules
A new imaging technique that uses electron diffraction waves to improve both image resolution and sensitivity to small structures has been developed. The technique works on the same principle as X-ray diffraction, but uses a laser-like collimated and coherent electron beam of a few tens of nanometers in diameter.

Discovery of Hidden Order in High-Tc Superconductors
The experimental findings imply that the two types of electron organization, coherent motion and spatial organization, are in competition in the copper oxides.

Crystallographic Control in Biomineralized Inorganic Nanostructures
Imprinting structural features of biological molecules on inorganic crystals using biomineralization.

Cluster Simulation Algorithm for Complex Fluids
Development of the geometric cluster algorithm, a highly efficient Monte Carlo method to simulate the behavior of colloids.