Spring 2013 Seminar Series

Course 9841:601-001
Time: Fridays, 11:00 a.m.
Lectures are Free and Open to the Public

Click here to print the schedule

Date	Venue*	Guest Speaker and Abstract Title
Jan. 18	PEAC	Dr. Jean-Luc Bredas, Regent’s Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Georgia Institute of Technology "An Integrated Computational Approach to the Electronic and Optical Processes in Organic Electronic Devices"
Feb. 1	GDYR	Dr. Patrick Stayton, Washington Research Foundation Endowed Professor, University of Washington "Opening the Intracellular Universe of Disease Targets to Biologic Drugs"
Feb. 15	PEAC	Dr. Gary K. Fedder, Howard M. Wilkoff Professor of Electrical Computer Engineering Carnegie Mellon University "The "More than Moore" trend in the microelectronics industry"
Feb. 22	GDYR	Dr. Adam W. Smith, Assistant Professor, Physical Chemistry, The University of Akron "Mobility and clustering in biological membranes using time-resolved fluorescence microscopy"
March 1	PEAC	Dr. Timothy Bunning, Principal Materials Research Engineer, Wright Patterson AFB "Dynamic Coloration via Polymer/Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Mixtures"
March 8	PEAC	Dr. David Bucknall, Professor, Materials Science & Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology "Organic Electronics - where have all the fullerenes gone?"
March 15	GDYR	Dr. David Mooney, Robert P. Pinkas Family Professor of Bioengineering Engineering & Applied Science, Harvard University "Infection-Mimicking Materials as Cancer Vaccines"
April 5	GDYR	Dr. Kyoko Nozaki, Professor, Department of Chemistry & Biotechnology, The University of Tokyo "Synthesis of Sterecontrolled Polymers Made of Carbon Monoxide or Carbon Dioxide"
April 19	PEAC	Dr. Lei Zhu, Associate Professor, Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering, Case Western Reserve University "Novel Polymer Ferroelectric Behaviors via Crystal Isomorphism and Nanoconfinement Effect"
April 26	PEAC	Dr. Yiying Wu, Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, The Ohio State University "P-Type Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells and Solar Fuels"

*PEAC = Polymer Engineering Academic Center, Aggarwal Lecture Hall
*GDYR = Goodyear Polymer Center, Auditorium

ABSTRACTS

January 18, 2013 at 11:00 a.m.

Aggarwal Lecture Hall, Room 130
Located in the Polymer Engineering Academic Center

Dr. Jean-Luc Bredas
Regent’s Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Georgia Institute of Technology

"An Integrated Computational Approach to the Electronic and Optical Processes in Organic Electronic Devices"

We first review the current state-of-the-art in the field of organic electronics and then focus on organic solar cells, which we define as solid-state cells in which the semiconducting materials between the electrodes are organic, be those polymers, oligomers, or small molecules. We describe the optical and electronic processes that take place in such cells and turn our attention briefly to: (i) optical absorption and exciton formation; (ii) exciton migration to the electron donor – electron acceptor interface; (iii) exciton dissociation into charge carriers, resulting in the appearance of holes in the donor component and electrons in the acceptor component; (iv) charge carrier mobility; and (v) charge collection at the electrodes [1-3]. In the second part of the presentation, we underline the complexity of the processes taking place at the nanoscale at the donor/acceptor interfaces and highlight the molecular understanding that comes from a computational approach combining electronic-structure theory calculations, molecular mechanics / molecular dynamics simulations, and Monte Carlo simulations [4-6].

References
[1] B. Kippelen and J.L. Bredas , Energy & Environmental Science 2, 251 (2009).
[2] J.L. Bredas, J. Norton, J. Cornil, and V. Coropceanu, Accounts of Chemical Research 42, 1691 (2009).
[3] Y. Zhou et al., Science 336, 327 (2012).
[4] N.C. Miller et al., Advanced Materials, 2012 (DOI: 10.1002/adma.201202293).
[5] N.C. Miller et al., Advanced Energy Materials, 2012 (DOI: 10.1002/aenm.201200392).
[6] Y.T. Fu, C. Risko, and J.L. Bredas, Advanced Materials, 2012 (DOI: 10.1002/adma.2012 03412).

Biography:
Jean-Luc Bredas received his B.S. (1976) and Ph.D. (1979) degrees from the University of Namur, Belgium. In 1988, he was appointed Professor at the University of Mons, Belgium, where he established the Laboratory for Chemistry of Novel Materials. While keeping an Extraordinary Professorship appointment in Mons, he joined the University of Arizona in 1999 before moving in 2003 to the Georgia Institute of Technology. At Georgia Tech, he is Regents’ Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and holds the Vasser-Woolley and Georgia Research Alliance Chair in Molecular Design. Since 2011, he is Adjunct Professor of Chemistry at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah. Jean-Luc Bredas is a Member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science and the Royal Academy of Belgium. He is the recipient of the 1997 Francqui Prize, the 2000 Quinquennial Prize of the Belgian National Science Foundation, the 2001 Italgas Prize, the 2003 Descartes Prize of the European Union, the 2010 Charles H. Stone Award of the ACS, and the 2013 David Adler Award in Materials Physics of the APS. He has published over 900 refereed articles (with a current h-index of 99) and given over 400 invited presentations. Since 2008, he has served as Editor for “Chemistry of Materials”. The research interests of his group focus on the computational characterization and design of novel organic materials of relevance for organic electronics and photonics.

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February 1, 2013 at 11:00 a.m.

Goodyear Auditorium, Room 229
Located in the Goodyear Polymer Center

Dr. Patrick Stayton
Washington Research Foundation Endowed Professor, University of Washington

"Opening the Intracellular Universe of Disease Targets to Biologic Drugs"

The Genome Era with its genomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics, has already delivered a remarkable treasure trove of new therapeutic targets for the Biotechnology industry. Unfortunately, it is widely accepted that small molecule drugs cannot fully capture this new therapeutic potential. Biologic drugs based on proteins, RNA, and DNA do have the broad target range that could translate the potential of the Genome Era into impactful new classes of therapeutics and Individualized Medicines. Today, however, biologic drug therapies are dramatically limited by delivery barriers. If we do not solve the grand challenge of developing broadly enabling drug delivery systems for biologic drugs, the potential of the Genome Era will never be fully realized. We have been developing synthetic polymeric delivery systems that mimic the highly efficient intracellular delivery systems found in pathogenic viruses and organisms. Their most important property ties together the sensing of pH changes to membrane destabilizing activity, and the carriers thus possess a hidden functionality that is expressed in the endosomal compartment to increase cytosolic delivery of macromolecules. Another important aspect of these polymeric carriers is the development of controlled polymerization techniques to streamline bioconjugation of targeting agents and therapeutics, as well as to generate controlled carrier architectures. The carriers are applicable to a wide range of biotherapeutics, and might open up new families of peptide, antibody or nucleic acid drug candidates that attack previously inaccessible intracellular targets.

Biography:
Dr. Patrick Stayton currently serves as the Washington Research Foundation Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Washington. He is the founding Director of the Institute for Molecular Engineering and Sciences, and the Center for Intracellular Delivery of Biologics. He received his B.S. in Biology (summa cum laude) from Illinois State University in 1984, his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Illinois in 1989, and was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, also at the University of Illinois.

Dr. Stayton’s eclectic research group works at the interface of fundamental molecular science and applied molecular bioengineering. His laboratory has fundamental projects aimed at elucidating the basic principles underlying biomolecular recognition, and connected projects applying these principles to medical applications in the drug delivery, point-of-care diagnostics, and regenerative medicine fields. He has published over 200 scientific papers. Dr. Stayton has a strong interest in translating the group’s research, has been awarded several patents, and is a co-founder of the startup companies PhaseRx Inc. based on his group’s biologic drug delivery work, and Nexgenia based on their diagnostic work.

Dr. Stayton has been elected as a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and has been the recipient of the Clemson Award from the Society For Biomaterials and the CRS-Cygnus Recognition Award from the Controlled Release Society. He served as Co-Chair of the Gordon Conference on Drug Carriers in Medicine and Biology in 2010. He has also been awarded the 2009 Faculty Research Innovation Award, UW College of Engineering, and the Distinguished Teacher and Mentor Award from the Department of Bioengineering.

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February 15, 2013 at 11:00 a.m.

Aggarwal Lecture Hall, Room 130
Located in the Polymer Engineering Academic Center

Dr. Gary K. Fedder
Howard M. Wilkoff Professor of Electrical Computer Engineering Carnegie Mellon University

"The "More than Moore" trend in the microelectronics industry"

"The 'More than Moore' trend in the microelectronics industry"' builds upon a traditional focus on improving mixed analog-digital systems-on-chip. The industry now has an increasing interest in the expansion of "More than Moore" into mixed-physics microsystem integration with CMOS. The growing commercial success of integrated microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), particularly in inertial sensors, is providing an even greater impetus for extending the integration paradigm to other applications. Predictions of large growth cast for CMOS systems with embedded MEMS-enabled sensing and actuation functions cater to evolving applications in mobile communications, sensed infrastructure, and health care. Two specific application areas inspiring research within my group include reconfigurable RF communications and "near-zero invasive" implantable microsystems.

Emerging features in future integrated microsystems include reconfigurability, self-configurability and "self-healing" in the presence of manufacturing and environmental variability. These are general attributes that hold promise of providing new agile functionality along with high manufacturing yield, resiliency and redundancy for critical applications. Reconfigurable RF transceivers are one class of such systems, where RF MEMS switches, tunable passives and resonator filters promise to play a distinctive role. Self-healing techniques are of particular interest in making manufacturable resonator filters. Operation at or above 5 GHz requires sub-micron features that are prone to variation that increases in severity. A technique called statistical element selection embraces the variation by selecting specific resonators from a nominally equal array to build self-healing filters.

A second topic I will touch upon is our work on reliable ultra-compliant neural probes. In contrast to the electronic nature of RF MEMS self-healing, these probes exhibit a literal "self-healing" within live tissue. Very fine meandered platinum wires with parylene insulation insert into brain tissue via a stiff bio-dissolvable needle. The tissue heals around the wiring with minimal microglial (i.e., scar) formation, with the long-term intent of creating reliable single-unit recording electrodes that incorporate intimately with the brain tissue. Histology results from needle insertions provide initial validation of the approach. Ultimately, such probes will contain hundreds of electrodes with distributed CMOS electronics to provide the degrees of freedom necessary to drive complex brain-machine interfaces.

Biography:
Gary K. Fedder is Director of the Institute of Complex Engineered Systems, Howard M. Wilkoff Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Professor in The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from MIT in 1982 and 1984, respectively, and his Ph.D. degree from U. C. Berkeley in 1994. From 1984 to 1989, he worked at Hewlett-Packard on circuit design and printed-circuit modeling. He is an IEEE Fellow and received the 1994 AIME Electronic Materials Society Ross Tucker Award, the 1996 Carnegie Institute of Technology G.T. Ladd Award, and the 1996 NSF CAREER Award. He currently serves as a subject editor for the IEEE/ASME Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, on the editorial boards of the IoP Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering and IET Micro & Nano Letters and as co-editor of the Wiley-VCH Advanced Micro- and Nanosystems book series. He has contributed to over 160 research publications and holds several patents in the MEMS area. His research interests include microsensor and microactuator design and modeling, integrated MEMS manufactured in CMOS processes and structured design methodologies for MEMS.

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February 22, 2013 at 11:00 a.m.

Goodyear Auditorium, Room 229
Located in the Goodyear Polymer Center

Dr. Adam W. Smith
Assistant Professor, Physical Chemistry, The University of Akron

"Mobility and clustering in biological membranes using time-resolved fluorescence microscopy"

Fluorescence microscopy is a powerful tool for imaging proteins in phospholipid membranes. Yet it remains challenging to quantify the assembly and dynamics of protein complexes especially in a live‐cell context. This is because protein clusters undergo complex translational dynamics and are smaller than the optical diffraction limit. Recent breakthroughs in sub‐diffraction limit fluorescence imaging make it possible to study membrane organization at higher resolution, but it is still difficult to measure correlated, dynamic assembly. I have performed two‐color fluorescence microscopy with time‐correlated single photon counting (TCSPC) to measure the oligomerization state of epidermal growth factor receptors (EGFR) in live cells. Using a pulsed interleaved excitation scheme, it is possible to quantify the monomer‐dimer population of EGFR in live cells with high accuracy. The results demonstrate that EGFR is primarily monomeric in the plasma membrane, with only a small percentage of cells showing an appreciable dimer population. This approach represents a powerful experimental platform to measure protein‐protein and protein‐lipid interactions in live cells.

Biography:
Adam W. Smith received his Honors B.S. in physical chemistry from the University of Utah and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the direction of Andrei Tokmakoff. He did his postdoctoral work at University of California Berkeley with Jay T. Groves. In 2012 Adam visited the National University of Singapore as a Senior Research Scientist and then returned to Berkeley as a Project Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. In the Fall of 2012 he joined the University of Akron Department of Chemistry as an Assistant Professor.

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March 1, 2013 at 11:00 a.m.

Aggarwal Lecture Hall, Room 130
Located in the Polymer Engineering Academic Center

Dr. Timothy Bunning
Principal Materials Research Engineer, Wright Patterson AFB

"Dynamic Coloration via Polymer/Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Mixtures"

We present recent work on novel photo-optical and electro-optical effects in liquid crystal/polymer mixture based constructs. These dynamic changes are driven by light induced changes to azo-benzene molecules which have been incorporated either into the LC backbone, as a dopant to a LC fluid, or within the surface boundary layer. Several constructs are presented including a polarizer-free optical switch based on cycloidal diffractive waveplates, reflective cholesteric cells which can be toggled between a reflective and a scattering state, and reflective systems whose interaction with incident irradiation is autonomous. We also present recent work on novel electro-optical effects of negative dielectric, polymer stabilized cholesteric liquid crystals. Weakly crosslinked systems formed using non-chiral monomers exhibit large scale symmetric broadening of the selective reflection notch at low DC field strengths. Systems which possess more polymer content and formed using chiral monomers exhibit large scale red tuning of the reflection notch. We believe the two observations are related and involve subtle movement of the polymer networks under the applied field.

Biography:
Timothy J. Bunning is a Principal Materials Research Engineer and Division Chief of the Functional Materials Division of the Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He leads a diverse organization of ~200+ people performing basic and applied research in photonic, soft matter, and nanoelectronics-based materials for a variety of applications including survivability, directed energy, ISR, integrated power, and autonomy. He is technically active in a diverse internal and external R&D effort that is developing new responsive materials and approaches for integration in optical sensing, laser beam control, and filtering applications. His current research interests center on developing novel mixtures of polymer and liquid crystal materials for use in a variety of dynamic photonic architectures. He is the recipient of the 2002 John H. Dillon Medal from the Division of Polymer Physics, American Physical Society, and is a Fellow of APS, SPIE, and the Air Force Research Laboratory.

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March 8, 2013 at 11:00 a.m.

Aggarwal Lecture Hall, Room 130
Located in the Polymer Engineering Academic Center

Dr. David Bucknall
Professor, Materials Science & Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

"Organic Electronics - where have all the fullerenes gone?"

We present recent work on novel photo-optical and electro-optical effects in liquid crystal/polymer mixture based constructs. These dynamic changes are driven by light induced changes to azo-benzene molecules which have been incorporated either into the LC backbone, as a dopant to a LC fluid, or within the surface boundary layer. Several constructs are presented including a polarizer-free optical switch based on cycloidal diffractive waveplates, reflective cholesteric cells which can be toggled between a reflective and a scattering state, and reflective systems whose interaction with incident irradiation is autonomous. We also present recent work on novel electro-optical effects of negative dielectric, polymer stabilized cholesteric liquid crystals. Weakly crosslinked systems formed using non-chiral monomers exhibit large scale symmetric broadening of the selective reflection notch at low DC field strengths. Systems which possess more polymer content and formed using chiral monomers exhibit large scale red tuning of the reflection notch. We believe the two observations are related and involve subtle movement of the polymer networks under the applied field.

Biography:
David Bucknall gained his BSc in Chemistry from the University of Nottingham and his PhD under the supervision of Dame Professor Julia Higgins. Following a postdoc at the Max-Planck Institute fur Polymerforschung he joined ISIS, the UK national neutron facility as a instrument scientist responsible for the neutron reflectivity program. After 7 years of supervising other peoples students, he joined the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford in order to supervise his own students. Wanting to see more of the world he was subsequently persuaded to join Georgia Tech where he has been for the last 8 years. His group apply a variety of neutron and X-ray scattering methods in trying to understand the structure-property-processing relationships in areas of organic electronics, polymer deformation and failure as well as hydrogels

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March 15, 2013 at 11:00 a.m.

Goodyear Auditorium, Room 229
Located in the Goodyear Polymer Center

Dr. David Mooney
Robert P. Pinkas Family Professor of Bioengineering Engineering & Applied Science, Harvard University

"Infection-Mimicking Materials as Cancer Vaccines"

Abstract coming soon.

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April 5, 2013 at 11:00 a.m.

Goodyear Auditorium, Room 229
Located in the Goodyear Polymer Center

Dr. Kyoko Nozaki
Professor, Department of Chemistry & Biotechnology, The University of Tokyo

"Synthesis of Sterecontrolled Polymers Made of Carbon Monoxide or Carbon Dioxide"

Abstract coming soon.

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April 19, 2013 at 11:00 a.m.

Aggarwal Lecture Hall, Room 130
Located in the Polymer Engineering Academic Center

Dr. Lei Zhu
Associate Professor, Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering, Case Western Reserve University

"Novel Polymer Ferroelectric Behaviors via Crystal Isomorphism and Nanoconfinement Effect"

Despite comprehensive understanding of novel ferroelectric [i.e., relaxor ferroelectric (RFE) and antiferroelectric (AFE)] behaviors for ceramics, RFE and double hysteresis loop (DHL) behaviors have just emerged for ferroelectric crystalline polymers since the past 15 years. A number of applications such as electrostriction, electric energy storage, and electrocaloric cooling have been realized by utilizing these novel ferroelectric properties. However, the fundamental understanding is still lacking. In this feature article, we intend to unravel the basic physics behind these novel ferroelectric behaviors via systematic studies of poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-trifluoroethylene) [P(VDF-TrFE)]-based terpolymers and e-beam irradiated copolymers. It is found that both crystal internal structure and crystal-amorphous interaction are important for achieving the RFE and DHL behaviors. For the crystal internal structure effect, friction-free dipole switching and nanodomain formation by pinning the polymer chains are essential, and they can be achieved via the mechanism of crystal repeating unit isomorphism. Physical pinning [e.g., in P(VDF-TrFE)-based terpolymers] induces a reversible RFE↔FE phase transition and thus the DHL behavior, whereas chemical pinning [e.g., in e-beam irradiated P(VDF-TrFE)] results in the RFE behavior. Finally, the crystal-amorphous interaction (or the nanoconfinement effect) results in a competition between the polarization and depolarization local fields. When the depolarization field becomes stronger than the polarization field, a DHL behavior can also be observed. Obviously, the physics is different from ceramics and can be largely attributed to the long chain nature of semicrystalline ferroelectric polymers. This understanding, in the future, will help us design new ferroelectric polymers with improved properties and better applications.

Biography:
Prof. Zhu received his B.S. degree in Materials Chemistry in 1993 and M.S. degree in Polymer Chemistry and Physics in 1996 from Fudan University. He received his Ph.D. degree in Polymer Science from University of Akron in 2000. After two-year post-doctoral experience at the Maurice Morton Institute, University of Akron, he joint Institute of Materials Science and Department of Chemical, Materials and Biomolecular Engineering at University of Connecticut, as an assistant professor. In 2007, he was promoted to associate professor with tenure. In 2009, he moved to Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering at Case Western Reserve University as an Associate Professor. His research interests include high k polymer and organic-inorganic hybrid nanomaterials for high energy density capacitor applications, development of artificial antibody as nanomedicines, and supramolecular self-assembly of discotic liquid crystals. He is recipient of NSF Career Award, 3M Non-tenured Faculty Award, DuPont Young Professor Award, and Rogers Teaching Excellence Award. He is author and co-author of 97 refereed journal publications and 4 book chapters. He delivered 85 invited talks and 40 contributed presentations, and his total citation is over 2300 times with an h-index of 26.

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April 26, 2013 at 11:00 a.m.

Aggarwal Lecture Hall, Room 130
Located in the Polymer Engineering Academic Center

Dr. Yiying Wu
Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, The Ohio State University

"P-Type Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells and Solar Fuels"

A p-type dye-sensitized solar cell (p-DSC) is based on the cathodic sensitization of a p-type semiconductor and thus operates in a manner reverse to the conventional Gratzel Cells. P-DSCs can be integrated with n-DSCs into tandem DSCs, which hold a great promise for achieving high power conversion efficiencies. In my presentation, I will first describe a series of cyclometalated ruthenium complexes of the type Ru[(N^N)2(C^N)]+ as sensitizers for NiO-based p-DSCs. Then I will talk about our efforts in understanding the device physics of these solar cells. Finally I will discuss the limitations of the commonly used NiO p-type semiconductor, and present the results based on the delafossite semiconductors.

Biography:
Yiying Wu received his B.S. in chemical physics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1998, and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley with Professor Peidong Yang in 2003. He then did his postdoctoral research with Professor Galen D. Stucky at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and joined the chemistry faculty at The Ohio State University in the summer of 2005. He won the Cottrell Scholar Award in 2008 and NSF-CAREER award in 2010. He was promoted to associate professor in 2011.

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