Year: 2016

Undergraduate

anae Uncategorized

University of Oregon undergraduates interested in materials science or performing research in an MSI-related lab should review the research pages of MSI faculty and email the appropriate faculty requesting information about any available undergraduate research openings.

Summer Research Programs:

Spend your summer at the University of Oregon and get hands-on experience in a materials science lab!

The University of Oregon offers a variety of programs for undergraduates to learn about different aspects of materials science and get hands-on research experience in the lab. Whether you are looking for a one week or ten week experience, you’ll have the opportunity to work alongside graduate students and faculty using state-of-the-art instruments during the week and enjoy the local recreation adventures on the weekends.

Undergraduates who are looking for a summer-long research project to gain vital skills in the lab should check out:

Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU)
With the National Science Foundation, MSI sponsors a ten week summer undergraduate research program for Physics and Chemistry Majors to participate in a wide variety of exciting research projects. It’s not all work, however. Having local and regional adventures are a vital component of the program.

Funded in part by the National Science Foundation , these all expenses paid, one-week experience provides undergraduate chemistry and physics majors with the necessary background to understand specialized areas of materials science. All programs involve class time and career discussions to supplement the labs, and tours of local industries illustrate the large-scale implementation of the chemical processes discussed.

NSF Summer Program in Solid State & Materials Chemistry
This is a nine-week summer program in solid state chemistry research for undergraduate and college faculty, under the direction of a recognized authority in the field. A stipend plus a housing supplement and travel expenses are paid for all participants by the program.

In-Situ (S)TEM/DTEM: From High Spatial Resolution to High Temporal Resolution

anae Seminar

Nigel Browning
Fundamental & Computational Sciences Directorate
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Richland, WA

October 9, 2015

The last few years have seen a paradigm change in (scanning) transmission electron microscopy ((S)TEM) with unprecedented improvements in spatial, spectroscopic and temporal resolution being realized by aberration correctors, monochromators and pulsed photoemission sources. Spatial resolution now extends to the sub-angstrom level, spectroscopic resolution into the sub-100meV regime and temporal resolution for single shot imaging is now on the nanosecond timescale (stroboscopic imaging extends this even further to femtoseconds). The challenge now in performing experiments in an (S)TEM is to implement the in-situ capabilities that will allow both engineering and biological systems to be studied under realistic environmental conditions. Performing experiments using in-situ stages or full environmental microscopes presents numerous challenges to the traditional means of analyzing samples in an electron microscope – we are now dealing with the variability of dynamic process rather than a more straightforward static structure. In this presentation, I will discuss the recent developments in the design and implementation of in-situ stages being pursued at the Pacific Northwest National laboratory (PNNL). Examples of the use of these capabilities for the direct imaging of interfaces and defects, to identify the fundamental processes involved in nucleation and growth of nanostructures from solution, and to investigate the electrochemical processes taking place in next generation battery systems will be presented. As the in-situ stages have been designed to be incorporated into both high spatial resolution aberration corrected (S)TEM as well as into high temporal resolution Dynamic TEM (DTEM), the potential for future experiments to study fast dynamics, including those in live biological structures, will also be discussed.

Approaching Complex Scientific Problems with Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Computational Chemistry

anae Seminar

Karl T. Mueller
Laboratory Fellow, Physical and Computational Sciences Directorate, Pacific
Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA 99352
Professor, Department of Chemistry, Penn State University, University Park, PA
16802

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a powerful tool for investigating complex systems especially when we are fortunate enough to have sensitivity, selectivity, resolution, and available spectrometer time working in our favor. However, we are not always so fortunate. With many collaborative friends and colleagues, we are able to take both simple and complicated NMR experiments and apply them to solve difficult problems in materials and chemical sciences. My research teams at PNNL and Penn State have applied solid-­‐ and solution-­‐state NMR studies to problems in materials, energy, and environmental sciences, especially focusing on the nature of reactive sites on surfaces and solvation dynamics in battery electrolyte systems. Where sensitivity concerns are present, the use of nuclides such as 31P and 19F (or even 13C in enriched probe molecules) and the employment of methods such as “surface-­‐selective” cross-­‐polarization have provided quantification and identification of reactive sites. In addition, the use of pulsed-­‐field-­‐gradient diffusion methods for measuring translational motion reveals key features of ion solvation that control performance in multi-­‐component battery electrolytes. These ideas and
related NMR methods can then be used to probe dynamics or kinetics, and examples will be provided where the exceptional information content provided by NMR experiments, combined with both quantum chemical and classical molecular dynamics simulations, proves critical for addressing complex problems.