General Information

On October 29, Nanotech West Laboratory was honored to host a visit from a Chinese delegation representing Hubei Province, a sister-state to Ohio since 1979 and home of Wuhan University.  The delegation of 14 included Mr. Yang Song, Deputy Party Secretary of Hubei Provincial Committee and Mr. Wang Dunsheng, Deputy Director-General of Hubei Provincial Department of Agriculture.

Dr. John Carlin, Research Scientist and IMR Member of Technical Staff, provided the distinguished group with an overview of the photovoltaics research taking place at Ohio State and the broad research capabilities of OSU’s Nanotech West Laboratory. Dr. Carlin was joined by Dr. Yun Wu, a Postdoctoral Researcher at OSU’s NSEC program, who is originally from Hubei Province.

During their visit to Ohio, the Hubei group signed a memorandum of agreement with the Ohio Department of Agriculture pledging to continue a long-standing alliance between Ohio and Hubei Province in promoting and advancing their agriculture industries.

Throughout the month of November, the Office of Research is hosting a variety of workshops, panel discussions, and other events for Research Awareness Month.  A full schedule of events is available online here

IMR will participate in the Research Awareness Month Expo on Tuesday, Novermber 3rd from 8:30 am to 4:00 pm at Thompson Library. Stop by our table to talk to our technical staff, pick up some literature, and learn more about IMR and what services we provide to the OSU materials community.

The announcement below of the naming of a Center of Excellence in Advanced Energy at Ohio State is from the OSU Media Relations Department:

Ohio State to help drive Ohio’s new energy economy as state-designated Center of Excellence

The Ohio State University today was named an Ohio Center of Excellence in advanced energy by Ohio Governor Ted Strickland. The selection recognizes Ohio State’s wide range of research expertise in the areas of climate, energy and the environment and ties the university’s work directly to the state’s economic development strategies.

In a news conference, Gov. Strickland designated nine Ohio Centers of Excellence in advanced energy. Each of the Centers will focus their academic and research activities within advanced energy to undertake world-class research that ultimately drive the competitiveness of Ohio’s economy. Each will also help the state meet the requirements of Senate Bill 221, a landmark energy reform bill, enacted last year.

Caroline Whitacre, vice president for research at Ohio State, says the award recognizes the university’s unique capacity to assemble comprehensive teams that can focus on critical problems such as global warming, carbon sequestration and a range of sustainable new energy and transportation technologies.

“Ohio State has the people and programs in place to help take energy research in Ohio to the next level,” Whitacre said. “More than 300 Ohio State researchers are focused on some aspect of climate, energy, and the environment. We already partner with many businesses and nonprofits, entities that have helped make Ohio a top-five producer of clean energy jobs. This recognition will help strengthen those partnerships and attract the best researchers, faculty and students who are committed to this important field.”

Whitacre says the Centers of Excellence take the existing synergies and opportunities for collaboration in the energy area among Ohio universities already established by the University Clean Energy Alliance of Ohio to a new level.

“In a time of scarce resources, we think it’s important to leverage the strengths of all the state’s public institutions in addressing Ohio’s future. There are a lot of potential connections between us that will benefit not only Ohio State, but also the other universities and ultimately, the citizens of Ohio – by educating the best students and in facilitating cutting-edge research and development that will serve as an economic driver for the state’s future.”

Creating Centers of Excellence at Ohio’s public universities is part of the University System of Ohio’s Strategic Plan for Higher Education, 2008-2017. The idea draws upon the distinctive research strengths of each institution to make Ohio competitive in the country and in the world. It is a way of organizing research excellence across the state to solve problems, create new technologies and propel promising state industries.

In response to the request, Ohio State created five Centers of Excellence which draw faculty and researchers from across the institution to contribute in the most immediate ways to the economic health of our state and to its position in a global economy: Climate, Energy and the Environment; Health and Well-Being, Human Behavior and Bioinformatics; State, Regional and Urban Development; Food Production, Supply and Safety; and Materials, Manufacturing Technologies and Nanotechnologies.

Advanced energy represents the first round of announcements of Centers of Excellence that align with the state’s targeted industries and keep talent in Ohio. The additional university Centers for advanced energy are located at: Bowling Green State University; Case Western Reserve University; Central State University; University of Cincinnati; University of Dayton; The Ohio State University; Ohio University; and The University of Toledo.

Ohio State dedicates more than 300 researchers to the nation’s quest for environmentally sustainable energy solutions that promote economic growth in Ohio and safeguard our planet. Comprehensive teams at Ohio State build on extensive expertise to sequester carbon, refine carbon-trading, generate cleaner, less expensive and renewable power and protect natural resources. They track the effect of climate change on water resources from retreating glaciers to rising sea levels and water tables across the globe. And, they partner with advanced materials experts to make solar energy collection even more commercially viable.

The OSU Institute for Materials Research (IMR) announces the first talk in its 2009-2010 IMR Colloquia Series:

Toward Higher Performance Permanent Magnets for Automotive Applications
Kazuhiro Hono
National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) and University of Tsukuba

Thursday, October 29, 2009
9:00 – 10:00 AM (light reception to follow)
E100 Scott Laboratory
201 West 19th Avenue

For a full abstract and bio click here

2009 IMR Materials Week brought together over 250 attendees, including representatives from 14 different universities and 12  industry collaborators.

The ending to this exciting week of shared discoveries was a luncheon where we announced the six winners of this year’s “Best Student Poster Award.”  The award winners were selected from 2 different poster sessions, a Materials Research Student Poster Session and the Center for Emergent Materials Student Poster Session.

2009 IMR Materials Week Poster Session Award Winners:

***Tengfei Jiang, Toward Site Specific Stamping of Graphene
Co -Authors: Dongsheng Li, Siddarth Rajan, Wolfgang Windl
Advisor: Nitin Padture
Department: Materials Science and Engineering
 

Hyunkyu Choi, Characterization of Doped LaFe O3 Oxygen Reduction Catalysts
Co-Authors: Nandita Lakshminarayanan, John Kuhn
Advisor: Umit S. Ozkan
Department: Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
 

Inhee Lee, Ferromagnetic Resonance Imaging Using a Submicron Localized Spin Wave Mode
Co-Authors: Yuri Obukhov, Gang Xiang, Adam Hauser, Fengyuan Yang, Palash Banerjee, Denis Pelekhov
Advisor: P. Chris Hammel
Department: Physics
 

**Adam Hauser, Magnetic and Structural Properties of Half-Metallic Sr2FeMoO6 Epitaxial Films Fabricated by Ultra-High Vacuum Sputtering
Co-Authors: R. A. Ricciardo, T. Meyer, A. Genc, P. M. Woodward, H. L. Fraser
Advisor: Fengyuan Yang
Deparment: Physics
 

**Donghun Lee, STM Studies of an Atomic-Scale Gate Electrode Formed by a Single Charged Vacancy in GaAs
Advisor: Jay Gupta
Department: Physics
 

**Rebecca Ricciardo, Chemical, Magnetic and Orbital Order in the substituted Double Perovskite Sr(1-x)Ca(x)Mn0.5Ru0.5O3
Advisor: Patrick M. Woodward
Department: Chemistry

** These students represent the award winners from the Center for Emergent Materials

We look forward to having you join us at IMR Materials Week next year!

IMR SHUTTLE SERVICE CANCELLED
 
Due to the 2009 Materials Week conference and the Labor Day holiday, the IMR Shuttle Van will NOT be running Monday, August 31st through Monday, September 7th. 
 
We will resume our normal shuttle schedule on Tuesday, September 8th.

The Ohio Department of Development has announced that The Ohio State University will receive an Ohio Research Scholars Program award totaling over $18 million to fund its proposal, Technology-Enabling and Emergent Materials.

The award funds two endowed Ohio Research Scholars positions for The Ohio State University, a Nanoscale Materials Microscopist and a Molecular Chemist; one Ohio Research Scholar at University of Dayton, a Multi-scale Composites Processing Chair; and one Ohio Research Scholar at University of Akron, a Polymer/Biomolecular Engineer. In addition, the award allows Ohio State to fund internally a third OSU Ohio Research Scholar, a Molecular Biochemist.

These five Ohio Research Scholars will work together in a unique research cluster to pioneer revolutionary approaches to materials development, leveraging the existing materials science strengths of the three partner universities. The OSU Institute for Materials Research was integral to the success of this proposal, having coordinated the proposal development process. IMR will continue to provide leadership with this program through coordination the collaborative projects undertaken by this cluster of Scholars.

Dr. Denis Pelekhov has joined the Institute for Materials Research as a Research Scientist, effective May 1, 2008. Denis holds a Ph.D. degree in Physics and conducted research at Los Alamos National Laboratory for over four years before joining The Ohio State University in 2002.

Many members of our campus materials community already know Denis as the manager of the ENCOMM NanoSystems Laboratory (ENSL). Through a new IMR partnership with ENCOMM, Denis will continue to work in this valuable capacity as an IMR Member of Technical Staff.

The ENSL facility is operated by ENCOMM (the Center for Electronic/Magnetic Nanoscale Composite Multifunctional Materials) and includes a photolithography lab, cleanroom, atomic force microscope, SQUID magnetometer, and the recently acquired FEI Helios NanoLab 600 Focused Ion Beam Mill/Scanning Electron Microscope (FIB/SEM) announced earlier this year.

Please join us in welcoming Denis to the Institute for Materials Research, and feel free to contact him at pelekhov.1@osu.edu or 614-292-9125 to schedule ENSL training.  Learn more about the ENSL and the facility’s capabilities.

IMR announces the availability of new office space in its IMR West Campus office located in the Science Village building at 1318 Kinnear Road. IMR is making available over two dozen new office cubicles to IMR members and their research groups. These dedicated workspaces are fully-equipped cubicles with centralized printing, copying, fax and wireless internet services. The office suite also has a lounge area and a kitchen. We are pleased to offer these cubicles free of charge to IMR members and their staff and students on a first-come-first-served basis.

With the coming major equipment acquisitions added to the already significant facilities and resources available at Nanotech West Laboratory, this service is intended to further improve connectivity with West Campus research facilities. Office space at IMR West Campus is also available to industry users of Nanotech West equipment, on a monthly fee basis.

The suite is also the new home to two IMR Members of Technical Staff – Dr. John Carlin, a Research Scientist supporting PVIC and related research, and Senior Research Associate Aimee Bross, who continues to operate the Leica EBL system.

We invite you to tour the IMR West Campus office space and the laboratories available to OSU and industry researchers at Nanotech West. To inquire about availability of these dedicated workspaces or to schedule a tour, contact Layla Manganaro (manganaro.4@osu.edu or 247-4685).

To further improve connectivity between campus and Nanotech West Lab, the IMR also provides a free passenger shuttle with six round-trips each weekday. In the six months that IMR has offered this shuttle service, we’ve seen a significant demand with monthly ridership continuing to grow to over 120 passengers per month. We anticipate a marked increase in 2008 to coincide with the EBL system move and upcoming new equipment acquisitions at Nanotech West Laboratory.

Learn more about the IMR shuttle, the shuttle schedule, and Nanotech West Lab facilities.

IMR is pleased to welcome its second IMR Member of Technical Staff, Research Scientist Dr. John Carlin, to our community. John is no stranger to OSU as he is a 2001 PhD graduate who performed research on III-V compound semiconductor epitaxy and device processing during his graduate school days. From 2001-2004 he was a project manager and researcher at Amberwave Systems Corporation in charge of chemical vapor deposition for SiGe materials and strained Si devices. After a short stint in the research and development of gallium nitride (GaN) for light emitting diodes at Cree Inc., John became a Research Scientist in the Materials and Manufacturing Directorate at AFRL in Dayton, Ohio where he worked on wafer bonding, epitaxy and characterization of GaN and other III-V materials and continued to obtain significant experience in contract-oriented research.

We are delighted to have recruited John to IMR with his more than 10 years of very relevant experience. John will be in charge of the new III-V Metalorganic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) laboratory and user facility that will be placed at Nanotech West Laboratory in 2008 as part of IMR’s Wright Center on Photovoltaics Innovation and Commercialization (WCI-PVIC). Key among John’s roles as IMR’s newest member will be facilitating collaborations via the MOCVD and device fabrication labs, bringing new industrial users to our facilities, and creating research partnerships and third party funding opportunities. John will play a major role in the PVIC Wright Center by assisting Bob Davis regarding PVIC activities within Nanotech West.

John joins IMR Senior Research Associate Aimee Bross, who operates the electron beam lithography facility which is set to move to Nanotech West Laboratory, 1381 Kinnear Road. John’s office is located in the IMR Suite in room 218 at Nanotech West. He can be reached by phone at 292-6112 or by email at carlin.9@osu.edu.