Events

The natural time- and length-scales of the elementary excitations in matter define a new regime of ultrafast vibrational and electron dynamics as the dimensions of the medium shrink into the 1 to 100 nm range. To achieve the required femtosecond temporal and nanometer spatial resolution we take advantage of the optical antenna properties of nanoscopic metal tips. They provide the necessary local field enhancement and spatial confinement for so called scattering-type near-field optical microscopy.

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Laser annealing and ablation was a subject of research since the first days of lasers. Recent interest to this topic is associated with discovering of new thermo-physical regimes at which materials subjected to laser irradiation are being structured at the sub-wavelength dimension scale. Our recent studies report super-resolution in laser ablation of thin films and formation of nano-sharp conical structures on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) initiated by single pulse of a KrF excimer laser operating at the wavelength of 248nm.

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Paradigms in Physics is a novel upper-division physics curriculum developed at Oregon State University. It teaches students to think like professional physicsists, and computation is an essential element. The junior year comprises ten modular courses, each focused on a specific paradigm or class of physics problems that serves as the centerpiece of the course and on which different tools and skills are built. A variety of computational examples and exercises are used throughout the courses.

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Screen reader software provides blind people fairly good access to e-mail, web text, and most electronic text documents. Until recently that access did not extend to math and scientific formulas or to figures. It does now. I will give a sneak preview of a collaborative project between ViewPlus and the American Physical Society that provides full access to APS journals, including the math and graphics. The APS has the most advanced publishing technology of any modern publisher (Of course, they are physicists!).

A brief introduction to nanotechnology will be followed by a description of two recent projects. In the first, atomic layer deposition (ALD) was used to coat carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with a thin film of ZnO. ALD is a highly conformal deposition technique in which films are deposited on a surface one monolayer at a time. CNTs are well known to have excellent field emission properties. ZnO is a versatile wide bandgap transparent semiconductor material with unique piezoelectric, UV photo luminescent (PL), gas sensing, and field emission properties that hold much promise for nanotech applications.

Thin films of wide band-gap semiconductors are deposited by the pulsed laser deposition method. Optimal deposition parameters for the individual compounds are reported. A family of p-type BaCuQF (Q = S, Se, Te) ceramics with a layered crystalline structure is investigated for active and passive device applications. Epitaxial films of BaCuTeF are grown in-situ on single-crystal MgO substrates. These films exhibit a maximum hole mobility of 8 cm2/Vs and conductivity of 167 S/cm. The band gap of BaCuTeF is 3 eV, much higher than 2.3 eV expected from powder results.

Sixty years ago, Linus Pauling revolutionized the way chemistry was taught in university classrooms when he published his 1947 college textbook, General Chemistry. It soon became the standard introductory chemistry text used in universities all over the world, and it secured his place in the public mind as a major scientific figure of the 20th century.

Nanoparticulate materials provide attractive building blocks for designing materials with tunable properties. In this presentation, the inter-relationships of structure and processing of nanoparticulate systems on their physico-chemical properties will be examined. The nanoparticulate systems that will be presented include examples from three broad material categories: polymers, ceramics and metals. Specific systems that will be discussed are cellulose nanocrystals (polymer), silicon carbide, (ceramic) as well as palladium (metal).