Research Spotlight
Penn State’s Leadership in Materials Research Recognized at Materials Day 2006
On April 10th and 11th, faculty, students and representatives from industry marked Penn State’s achievements in materials research with scientific talks, tabletop exhibits and poster displays. Now in its fifth year, Materials Day celebrates the contributions materials and materials research make in enabling our modern technology.
Staff research scientist Bob Hengstebeck chats with
Amy Brunner at the Penn State Nanofab exhibit.
From white light laser tweezers that can suspend a single particle and probe its physical and chemical properties to carbon nanotubes, the remarkable material that is 100-500 times stronger than steel and has unmatched electrical conductivity, materials research at Penn State is helping to revolutionize our every day life by making products stronger, faster and more energy efficient.
Materials Day 2006 drew speakers from industry giants ExxonMobil and materials maker Rohm and Haas, as well as from the Department of Defense and academia. In the keynote address, Dennis Dimiduk of the Air Force Research Laboratory reported efforts to overcome the bottleneck caused by the high cost of development and testing in the production of advanced materials. New multiscaled modeling techniques using high-powered computer modeling can help cut in half the time line for developing advance materials, he said.
Dennis Yablonsky, Secretary of the Pennsylvania
Department of Community and Economic Development.
From 4 to 6 percent of every barrel of oil is used up in the process of turning crude oil into gas or diesel fuel for your automobile, explained Thomas Degnan, director of materials research for the world’s most profitable company, ExxonMobil. This is a figure that can be reduced by better catalysts and new materials processes. Degnan described the areas in which Penn State materials scientist could help the petroleum industry cut energy costs through improved carbon steel corrosion resistance, improved metallurgy for more severe operating conditions and smart sensors that tell operators that maintenance is needed before the equipment fails.
Other speakers included Penn State physics professor Peter Eklund, who studies the properties of carbon nanotubes and started a company that manufactures nanotubes for use in field emission devices, LED television screens, and scientific research; and Thomas Donnellan, associate director at Penn State’s Applied Research Lab, which brings in $150 million annually in Department of Defense research funding. Donnellan, who oversees materials research at ARL, described some of their projects in coatings, composites, lightweight aluminum alloys and epoxies that will help strengthen vehicles and personnel armor, as well as the military’s interest in optical materials for telescopes, lasers and sensing materials for chemical and biological detection.
Faculty, students and industry representatives
mingle at Materials Day 2006.
Rohm and Haas has 17,000 employees worldwide engaged in developing and marketing specialty materials for everything from electronic devices to pharmaceuticals. Gary Calabrese, the company’s chief technology officer, described recent innovations in electronic materials and techniques, including CMP technology, which flattens the surface of computer chips for higher focus lithography, and lithographic printing at 1/5 the wavelength of light. Rohm and Haas is an active partner in several research groups and centers on campus.
A last minute addition to the speaker’s list, Pennsylvania Secretary of the Department of Community and Economic Development Dennis Yablonsky discussed the impact of materials on three of the commonwealth’s major industry clusters: life sciences, advanced electronics and energy. The Rendell administration has proposed an innovative use of the tobacco settlement funds. Called the Jonas Salk Legacy Fund, it would accelerate research in the life sciences by spending $400 million on physical facilities and $100 million on hiring and equipping 400 to 600 new senior research faculty at Pennsylvania universities, all without tax dollars.
Grad student Lilly Tian with her poster
on nanoscale piezoelectric response.
The newly inaugurated Rustum and Della Roy awards for innovation in materials research were presented to three young researchers: graduate student Walter Paxton for work on the world’s first catalytic nanomotor; graduate student Arrelaine Dameron for development and exploiting monolayers with very low intermolecular interaction strength; and junior faculty member and assistant professor Tony Jun Huang for a new class of mechanical nanodevices employing the artificial molecules called rotaxanes that can mimic some biological processes where motion is involved.
An interactive poster session with more than 90 student and faculty posters was the culminating activity of the two-day event. Materials Day once again provided opportunities for researchers whose labs are spread across the University Park and Hershey campuses to form new collaborations and view the current activities of colleagues.
Materials Day is sponsored by the Materials Research Institute, the focus for materials research at Penn State, on the web at www.mri.psu.edu.
