Campus Nanoscale Projects to Receive $1.5 Million from UC

A University of California program--UC-SMART--designed to enhance industrial research support through matching funds, recently announced it would provide about $1.5 million to fund four UCSB nano- and micro-technology research projects. The projects are being conducted under the auspices of the five-year, $15-million research alliance established last February between UCSB and Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. (MCC).

UC-SMART, which stands for University of California Semiconductor Manufacturing Alliance for Research and Training, will allocate funds over a four-year period for the Mitsubishi Chemical Center for Advanced Materials (MC-CAM) proposal "Design and Manufacturing of Materials and Devices for Optical and Electronic Applications."

Glenn Fredrickson, professor of chemical engineering and director of MC-CAM, is principal investigator for the UC-SMART proposal. He noted the UC funds would leverage the support from Mitsubishi to increase the center's overall research support. "Mitsubishi Chemical benefits from access to technologies created by a larger UCSB research effort; the State of California and UCSB benefit from job creation and income accrued from MCC's commercialization of these technologies through its California subsidiary," he said.

The four projects for which UC-SMART provided matching funds "invoke the common theme of using nano- and micron-scale self-assembly processes to create novel structured materials for electronic and photonic device applications," according to the proposal. They are: Organic Chromophores: These molecules absorb light in special ways. The key is to do something with that absorbed energy either locally (within the molecule) or contextually (in the molecule's environment). An example of a local use is "writing," as in three-dimensional optical media storage or holograms. Teaming up on this research are chemists Guillermo Bazan and Galen Stucky and chemical engineer Brad Chmelka.

Nanoparticle Patterning: Two engineering professors, Ed Kramer and Pierre Petroff, working in the areas of soft and hard materials, respectively, are attempting to use block co-polymers to place nano-sized particles on a regular lattice. This would pioneer a new technique for nanoscale semiconductor device construction. The research holds the promise of a new fabrication technique as well as new devices.

Self-Assembled Photonic Materials and Devices: Fredrickson and chemical engineer David Pine are collaborating on the development of new inorganic particles that are very efficient at scattering light. They are trying to engineer a titanium sphere, which is packed with one-micron spherical voids. (Titanium particles are widely used in white paint because they reflect light well.) Pine and Fredrickson not only seek more cost-effective coatings but also a light diffuser well suited to solid state lighting devices.

Better Conducting Polymers: Physicist Alan Heeger, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in chemistry, is trying to make conducting polymers with higher mechanical strength and higher electrical conductivity. So far, most conducting polymers have proved to be impracticably sensitive to their environments. The challenge is akin to figuring out how to get strands of wiggling spaghetti to line up side by side.