| NSF Org: |
DMR Division Of Materials Research |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | September 17, 2013 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | September 17, 2013 |
| Award Number: | 1337173 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Leonard Spinu
lspinu@nsf.gov (703)292-2665 DMR Division Of Materials Research MPS Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences |
| Start Date: | September 15, 2013 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2016 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $599,964.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $599,964.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
4333 BROOKLYN AVE NE SEATTLE WA US 98195-1016 (206)543-4043 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
36 Bagley Hall Seattle WA US 98195-1700 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | Major Research Instrumentation |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.049 |
ABSTRACT
Technical Description:
This Major Research Instrumentation award supports development of a scanning probe microscope capable of following dynamic local changes in charge density, ionic motion, polarization, and molecular cooperative phenomena with ~100 nanosecond temporal resolution. The instrument will allow these transient phenomena to be measured following optical, electrical, or thermal excitation while probing the system response with nanometer-scale spatial resolution in a controlled atmosphere and at varying temperatures. The instrument will offer capabilities including: (1) the ability to measure events taking place on ~100 ns timescales by analysis of the dynamic cantilever motion following a transient excitation; (2) the ability to excite the sample with optical pulses synchronized to the cantilever motion and to detect the resulting transient electrical, thermal, and dielectric relaxation processes with high resolution using robust, commercial AFM tips, and; (3) the ability to perform high-bandwidth non-contact frequency-modulation based dielectric measurements, and compare them with contact mode dielectric spectroscopy over a wide frequency range. By permitting these dynamic measurements to be performed at high bandwidth and high spatial resolution, the instrument will allow for future materials advances by directly connecting performance with specific structural features, even in heterogeneous films as are often encountered in real technological materials and applications.
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Non-Technical Description:
The investigators at the University of Washington will build, and commission a unique scanning probe microscope capable of following dynamic local changes in electronic, ionic, and molecular properties. The microscope will be able to capture changes happening faster than 100 billionths of a second in features smaller than 20 billionths of a meter (20,000 times smaller than a hair) in size. Once completed, the microscope will be made available as part of an existing shared user facility, providing researchers within and beyond the University of Washington with capabilities to study new materials for applications that advance economically and environmentally important technologies such as new solar photovoltaics for generating low cost energy, Li-ion batteries for consumer electronics and transportation applications, thermoelectric materials for waste heat recovery and thermal management, novel ferroelectrics for use in flexible electronics and sensors, and membranes for industrially and environmentally important separations. The equipment will support the ongoing training and outreach efforts of the Advanced Materials for Energy and Molecular Engineering and Sciences Institutes at the University. The program will support training of student and postdoctoral scholars in the construction and use of next generation of instrumentation, and by encouraging ties with industry will not only provide them with educational enrichment but also support future possibilities for commercialization and widespread adoption of the developed instrumentation.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is a powerful technique for imaging a wide range of nanostructured materials. Conventional AFM can produce detailed, nanometer-resolution images in various environmental conditions and can also measure many important properties such as electrical conductivity and mechanical stiffness. Commercially-available AFMs, while impressive, are not designed to measure changes in physical parameters at short time-scales. Such measurements are increasingly important in understanding the relationship between nanoscale structure and functionality in advanced materials. For example, in a polymer battery it is not enough to show an image of how the material is organized, but rather it is useful to determine where in the material ion transport is actively occurring. In particular, the ability to probe fast local dynamics – such as electronic charge and ionic motion – and correlate these dynamic process with local structure, is an important scientific capability that will benefit the development of new materials ranging from better batteries to better solar cells. Up to now, the ability to probe fast dynamic processes has been a gap in scientific capability.
To address this gap, this Major Research Instrumentation grant enabled the development of a system including custom hardware and custom software to measure events occurring as fast as about ten nanoseconds (ten billionths a second). The system was built around a Cypher-ES base from Asylum Research with significant amount development and construction to allow users to measure fast dynamics with the spatial resolution of conventional AFM. We showed how the time resolution of the instrument can be maximized and demonstrated the utility of the instrument for measuring nanostructured semiconductors with applications in electronics and solar cells.
The completed instrument has been added to the equipment pool as part of the University of Washington Molecular Analysis Facility (MAF), a university-wide shared user facility, open to both members of the University of Washington as well as outside academic and industrial users. It has already seen widespread use from multiple labs and departments on campus and from local industry. Students and staff scientists actively use the new microscope for myriad projects ranging from liquid imaging of proteins to piezoelectric materials to bioelectronic transistors to solar cells. We expect the near-constant demand for the instrument and its capabilities to extend well into the future, as its combination of capabilities are currently unique in the world.
Last Modified: 11/26/2016
Modified by: David S Ginger
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