Highlights

Modern electronics, e.g. a smart phone, relies heavily on science and engineering: semiconductors (diodes, transistors), magnetism (hard drives), photoelectric effect (digital camera), photon generation and lasers (LEDs, CD/DVD drives), light polarization (LCD), etc. The immediacy and applicability makes electronics a great tool for teaching science and technology.

Part of the CRISP Shared Equipment is a unique variable temperature, variable magnetic field ultrahigh vacuum scanning force microscope for applications in magnetic, electrostatic, piezoelectric, and friction force microscopy. • One chamber vacuum system• Entirely homebuilt, students played a key role in designing, building, and testing• Enables investigations of local ferromagnetic and ferroelectric properties of complex oxide multiferroic material near their transition temperatures

The goal of CRISP professional development workshops is to improve the quality and diversity of STEM education for science teachers in neighboring urban school districts. CRISP offers inquiry-based workshops which utilize CRISP specialized research facilities to emphasize the interdisciplinary nature of materials science and nanotechnology. Workshops have been offered to more than 100 participants to date.

The unique properties of transition metal oxides allow electrons to be manipulated in new ways. At CRISP, we have created an oxide device that enables a gas of electrons to be expanded or compressed with an applied electric field. The expansion or compression of the gas modulates the speed of moving electrons. The change in the speed of the electrons could be utilized in high speed transistors.

Many species of birds have feathers with colors that are the result of light scattering from a disordered arrangement of nanoscale air spheres. The feathers appear to be the same color from every angle. Inspired by these beautiful feathers, we design structures of polymer nanoparticles that produce color the same way. This is a new way to make color from nanostructures and could be useful for textiles, coatings, and cosmetics.

A multi-partner collaborative effort has focused on understanding semiconductor-oxide interfaces.  This involves atomic layer precision in synthesis of the structures, correlating the structure and electronic properties using first principles, and obtaining subatomic resolution of structures from synchrotron x-ray diffraction a the Advanced Photon Source (Argonne National Laboratory) and electron micrsocopy (Brookhaven National Laboratory).  The outcomes of these studies are critical for the design of ferroelectric field effect transistors.

Transition metal oxides exhibit many properties that can be harnessed in novel devices. For example, an epitaxial ferroelectric on silicon enables a nonvolatile transistor that remembers its state without continuous power consumption. A critical question is how the oxide/silicon interface affects the oxide functionality.

The vivid, angle-dependent structural colors of some butterfly wing-scales are produced by light scattering from complex three-dimensional nanoscale structures. With intricate structural knowledge from synchrotron small angle x-ray scattering (SAXS), we hypothesize that the butterfly nanostructures develop by the self-organizing kinetics of cellular membranes, as with soft matter systems such as a soap film spanning a wire contour.

Optical properties of nanomaterials are at the basis of a host of new technology and prototypes, including sensors, computing devices, and enhancing substrates for spectroscopy, yet fundamental understanding on how to tune such properties is just emerging. Researchers at Northwestern University have previously developed a method to accurately correlate the structure and properties of nanoparticles at the single particle level. This technique has now been used in a high throughput fashion to observe

When a negatively charged, high molecular weight polymer (hyaluronic acid) is mixed with a positively charged peptide-based, self-assembling molecule, a membrane is instantaneously formed at the interface of the two solutions. These closed membranes (sacs) have a complex hierarchical structure which presents a unique challenge in quantifying its mechanical properties. Membrane inflation and osmotic swelling techniques have been used to quantitatively characterize the membrane properties. These findings will be