Description
The Ben and Elaine Whiteley Endowment for Materials Research, established in 2007, provides support for materials research in the College of Science. In particular, it provides fellowship support for students to work full time during the Summer in a research laboratory, working on materials research related topics.Application procedure
Students submit an application to the chair of the chemistry or physics department by March 15. The chairs of the chemistry and physics departments will select one or two recipients and announce the decision before March 31. Students should submit the following material:- Personal statement: short statement of advocacy why you should be awarded a fellowship
- Curriculum Vitae
- Research proposal: short description of research plans for Summer
- Letter of support from adviser
- Copy of transcript
Previous recipients
| Year | Recipient | Adviser | Work area |
| 2013 | Michael Paul | YunShik Lee | Terahertz Spectroscopy |
| 2012 | Wei Wang | Doug Keszler | Oxide Electronics |
| 2011 | Whitney Shepherd | Oksana Ostroverkhova | Organic semiconductors |
| 2011 | Adeniyi Adenuga | Vince Remcho | Carbon nanotubes |
| 2010 | Jason Francis | Janet Tate | Electronic materials |
| 2010 | Tosapol Maluangnont | Mike Lerner | Graphite chemistry |
Project descriptions
Terahertz Spectroscopy:
Michael Paul is a PhD student working with Prof. Lee. His research plan addresses how electronic systems of condensed matter (in particular, semiconductor quantum-wells and graphene) evolve in the presence of strong and short electromagnetic waves of terahertz frequency. Ultrafast dynamics of intraband transitions in solids are relatively unknown to date. Strong terahertz fields interacting with electrons and holes induce motion of the electrons and holes in the picosecond timescale. The research method resolves amplitude and phase information of the carrier dynamics in the time domain. The objective of the research is to manipulate the electron and hole dynamics with strong terahertz pulses to explore field induced changes in light-matter interactions on a short timescale.Back to top of page.
Oxide Electronics:
Wei Wang is a Ph.D candidate working with Prof. Keszler. His research mainly involves developing aqueous solution precursor for depositing oxide electronics. Supported by the Whiteley Fellowship in the summer, he will be studying the promoted dehydration of Al4O3(PO4)2 by thin HfO2 surface layer. He will employ the ChemiSTEM capabilities on the new Titan TEM in Linus Pauling Science Center to compositionally characterize the HfO2/Al4O3(PO4)2 interface, trying to understand why the density of this interface has increased so dramatically and the role that it might be playing in the dehydration process. These experiments will be further supplemented with Medium Energy Ion Scattering studies at Rutgers to corroborate the findings observed with the ChemiSTEM.Back to top of page.
Organic semiconductors :
During the tenure of the Whiteley fellowship, Whitney worked with several classes of materials: benzothiophene (BTBTB) derivatives, anthradithiophene (ADT) derivatives and pentacene derivatives. She did extensive work testing BTBTB for suitability as a host for single molecule fluorescence experiments, where we would place very small amounts of a material to be studied in the BTBTB and image individual molecules of that active material. When attempting to image individual molecules, it is important that the host material be very clean before the addition of the molecules to image. With our collaborators, she was able to identify a purification method that seems to produce consistently useful material. BTBTB is a particularly interesting host for these experiments because it is an organic semiconductor as well. Often single molecule experiments are conducted in an inert host, which is easy to purify, but limits the processes that can be studied. Being able to image in BTBTB will open up a range of very interesting experiments studying charge transfer on an individual molecule.Back to top of page.
Functionalization of carbon nanotubes:
Adeniyi Adenuga is a third-year Ph.D. candidate in the Chemistry program, working with Prof. Vince Remcho. Adeniyi was supported in the summer of 2010/2011 via the prestigious Whiteley fellowship in materials science/chemistry. Adeniyi is focused on means of modifying surfaces of nanomaterials to enable high selectivity sensing of biomolecules. During the fellowship period, he worked on functionalization of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as part of a larger effort to build a field effect transistor (FET) biosensor for detection of disease biomarkers for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (a devastating oral cancer). The fellowship afforded him an excellent opportunity to focus on research alone during the summer session. The preliminary results obtained during the period served as the foundation that we are now building upon to achieve the global aim of a CNT-FET biosensor for cancer cell detection.Back to top of page.
Electronic materials:
Jason Francis worked in Janet Tate’s materials physics laboratory. He is involved in a project to deposit films of chalcogenides for use in solar cells, diodes, and thermoelectric heating and cooling devices. He is well on his way to becoming an expert in pulsed laser deposition of materials and in several structural, optical and transport characterization techniques. He has also learned computational skills that allow him to calculate materials properties via density functional theory. His work in BiCuOSe is the basis of a new research collaboration with a SUNY-Binghamton group that does high-energy X-ray research at Brookhaven National Lab.Back to top of page.
Graphite chemistry :
Tosapol has been working on new graphite chemistry - specifically new methods to make reduced graphite intercalation compounds, and new compounds. This is a major step in our strategy to delaminate graphite into graphene nanolayers by chemical processing. Graphene is a fascinating material with unexpected and unique properties, but there are no good ways to prepare bulk quantities. We hope to change that. The fellowship has allowed Tosapol to focus on the research, and this summer has resulted in successful work that will form the basis of one or two papers in research journals, and one or two chapters in his PhD thesis.Back to top of page.