NISPLab Welcomes Director Dr. Wen-An Chiou

We want to welcome Dr. Wen-An Chiou as the new director of the NISP Lab. Dr. Chiou has extensive expertise in imaging spectroscopy. Prior to UMD, Dr. Chiou was the director of the Materials Characterization Center at the University of California in Irvine.

NSF Funds Microscopy Facility Upgrades

The National Science Foundation will provide funds to upgrade the Maryland NanoCenter's electron microscopy facility within the Jeong H. Kim Building.

An inter-disciplinary team of researchers led by materials science and engineering Prof. Lourdes Salamanca-Riba will use the $500,000 grant to purchase accessories for two new microscopes in the Nanoscale Imaging Spectroscopy and Properties (NISP) Laboratory in the Kim Building.

"This award is central to our continued progress as a leader in science, engineering and nanotechnology research on structure at the molecular- and nanoscale," said Prof. Gary Rubloff, director of the Maryland NanoCenter. "The NSF award builds on major investments the campus has made in electron microscopy, providing funds to add pivotal chemical analysis capabilities to our new instrumentation. This makes our nanoscale electron microscopy competitive with the best, and available to the region through the open doors of the Maryland NanoCenter."

The upgrades will allow researchers to better detect the composition of material and evaluate its chemical state.

"These instruments essentially let us 'see' individual atoms in material," said Bryan Eichhorn, professor of chemistry and biochemistry.

In addition to being a part of the Maryland NanoCenter, the NISP Lab is a collaborative research facility of the University of Maryland and its "Beltway Partner" institutions, Howard, Catholic, George Washington, Georgetown and James Madison universities.

New Microscopes for NISP, Keck Labs

A new high resolution JEOL 2100 LaB₆ transmission electron microscope (TEM) has been delivered to the Nanoscale Imaging, Spectroscopy and Properties (NISP) Lab in the Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building. The new TEM is capable of resolving individual atoms and with the LaB6 gun has high brightness, allowing compositional information to be obtained from regions as small at 0.5 nm in diameter.

The microscope will be part of a new University-wide center for electron microscopy and will be managed by the Maryland NanoCenter.

Assistant Professor John Cumings (Materials Science and Engineering [MSE]), who conducts research in the NISP Lab, was enthusiastic about the JEOL's potential. "It will greatly enhance our capabilities to service both the materials and biology communities on campus," he said, noting that the JEOL should be ready for regular service by fall.

Also coming to the Kim Building is a combination scanning tunneling microscope (STM) and near-field microwave microscope, the result of a collaboration with Intematix, a company specializing in products used in combinatorial materials research. The microscope’s construction was funded by the W. M. Keck Foundation, and represents the second half of the Keck Lab's major equipment.

"It's literally unique," says doctoral student Chris Long (Physics), who will help set up the system for Associate Professor Ichiro Takeuchi (MSE and Center for Superconductivity Research). Takeuchi explained its importance: "Now we can image materials with atomic resolution scanning tunneling microscopy while simultaneously measuring microwave impedance, something which has never been done before." This added functionality creates images by recording where and how much a material interacts with microwaves, a technique relevant to radars and wireless communications.

The microscope is assembled and nearing completion at Intematix in California. Takeuchi and Long have been visiting, performing tests and preliminary experiments. When the microscope is ready, it will be shipped to Maryland. Takeuchi estimates it will arrive some time in the fall, and be fully functional by spring semester 2007.