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MRS Medal (Fall 2003 Meeting)

The MRS Medal is awarded for a specific outstanding recent discovery or advancement which has a major impact on the progress of a materials-related field.

Award Recipients
Ivan K. Schuller
University of California, San Diego
C. Jeffrey Brinker
Sandia National Laboratories/University of New Mexico

2003 MRS Medal Recipient Ivan K. Schuller University of California, San Diego

Talk Presentation: Exchange-Biased Nanostructures

Magnetic nanostructures are receiving increasing attention in recent years, motivated by the interesting phenomena when the physical size becomes comparable to relevant magnetic length scales. In addition, a number of important potential applications in the sensors and storage industries have emerged. When magnetic nanostructures are in contact with other dissimilar magnetic materials, and because their magnetic fields extend considerably outside the physical structure, they are very susceptible to interactions with the surrounding environment. A particularly interesting situation is one in which a ferromagnetic nanostructure is in contact with an antiferromagnetic substrate. In this "exchange-biased" configuration, a variety of unusual phenomena arise: the reversal mode of the ferromagnet changes considerably, the superparamagnetic transition temperature is affected, and there is a noticeable change in the microscopic spin configuration. A series of experiments in which these phenomena in nanostructured ferromagnets prepared by electron beam lithography and self assembly were studied will be described.

Work supported by AFOSR, DOE, NSF, and the A. von Humboldt Foundation.

Ivan K. Schuller received his Licenciado (1970) from the University of Chile, MS degree (1972) and PhD (1976) from Northwestern University. From 1978-1987, he was a Senior Physicist and Group Leader at Argonne National Laboratory. Since 1987, he has been a Professor of Physics at the University of California, San Diego; in addition to this position, he is also Layer Leader-Materials and Devices of CAL-(IT)2 Institute, and Director-AFOSR-MURI at UCSD. He held visiting professorships at the Catholic University-Santiago, Chile; Universidad del Valle-Cali, Colombia; the Catholic University-Leuven, Belgium, and the Rheinisch-Westfaelische Technische Hochschule, Aachen, Germany.

Schuller's honors and awards include: DOE Outstanding Scientific Accomplishmentsc1987; Chilean Academy of Sciencesc1992; Corresponding Fellow, Belgian Academy of Sciences c1998; APS Wheatley Awardc1999; Alexander von Humboldt Prizec2000; ISI Highly Cited Researchersc2000; and APS Adler Awardc2003. He is a member of: Materials Research Society (MRS); The American Physical Society (APS)cFellow; Sociedad Chilena de Fisica (Chilean Physics Society-SOCHIFI); and Neutron Scattering Society of America (NSSA).

Current scientific interests include the preparation, characterization, and study of metallic superlattices, heterostructures and nanostructures. Schuller's studies are dedicated to understanding the connection between structure and physical properties; principally, electrical transport, magnetism, superconductivity, and mechanical properties. He has also dedicated considerable effort to popularizing physics through public lectures and educational television

2003 MRS Medal Recipient C. Jeffrey Brinker Sandia National Laboratories/University of New Mexico

Talk Presentation: Self-Assembly of Biologically Inspired Complex Functional Materials

Nature combines hard and soft materials often in hierarchical architectures to get synergistic, optimized properties and combinations of properties with proven, complex functionalities. Emulating such natural material designs in robust engineering materials using efficient processing approaches represents a fundamental challenge to materials chemists. We are exploring chemically and mechanically based self-assembly strategies to create complex nanocomposites in thin-film and particulate forms. This presentation will first review our progress on evaporation-induced silica/surfactant self-assembly to prepare porous thin-film nanostructures of interest for membranes and low-k dielectrics. Then, recent work will be presented about using surfactant self assembly to simultaneously organize hydrophilic and hydrophobic precursors into hybrid (organic/silica or metal/silica) nanocomposites that are optically or chemically polymerizable, patternable, or adjustable. For example, the co-self-assembly of amphiphilic photoacid generators with silica precursors results in photosensitive thin-film mesophases in which the pore size, pore volume, surface area, and refractive index may be continuously varied over a range depending on the UV exposure time. Incorporation of switchable hydrogel or azobenze moieties provides a means to create nanostructures exhibiting chemo-, thermo- or opto-mechanical actuation. Biocompatible self assembly allows us to immobilize cells in a robust self-contained, self-sustaining environment of interest for stand-alone cell-based sensors. As a new direction, we have exploited mechanically based self assembly to create superhydrophobic, fractal silica surfaces mimicking those of the Lotus leaf and desert beetle. These surfaces are self cleaning and fundamentally affect flow, making them of general interest for fluidic-based microsystems.

C. Jeffrey Brinker was born in Easton, Pennsylvania, and attended Rutgers University where he received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees in ceramic science and engineering. He joined Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) as a member of the technical staff in 1979. He was promoted to Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at SNL and appointed Distinguished National Laboratory Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the University of New Mexico in 1991. Since 1999, he has been jointly employed at SNL where he is Sandia Fellow and at UNM where he is Professor of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering and Co-Director of the Center for Micro-Engineered Materials.

Brinker has been recognized nationally and internationally for his pioneering work in sol-gel processingtthe formation of ceramic materials from molecular precursors. This early work launched the successful series of MRS symposia entitled Better Ceramics Through Chemistry” and culminated in the publication of Sol-Gel Science in 1990 (with co-author George Scherer), a book that remains the most highly cited reference in this rapidly growing field. During the 1990s, Brinker made a number of significant contributions to the fields of porous and composite materials. Through the creative use of silane coupling chemistry, he devised a simple, inexpensive means to prepare aerogels, the world s lightest solids, at room temperature and pressure. By avoiding expensive and often dangerous supercritical (high-temperature and pressure) processing conditions, Brinker along with co-developer, Doug Smith, abolished the 60-year-old barrier to commercial aerogel production and enabled the first preparation of aerogels as thin films. More recently Brinker has combined sol-gel processing with molecular self assembly in a process called Evaporation-Induced Self-Assembly that enables the efficient formation of porous and composite nanostructures from homogeneous sols through simple evaporative procedures.

During the past several years, Brinker and his UNM and Sandia colleagues have extended their original work on evaporation-induced self assembly in several significant ways. First, they demonstrated the direct writing of functional self-assembled nanostructures using computer-driven pens and ink-jet printers. This approach, dubbed ‘intelligent ink by the N.Y.Times, provided a simple robust means to form functional, hierarchically organized structures in seconds and established the first link between computer-aided design and self-assembled nanostructures. Second, they demonstrated the self assembly of photosensitive films that incorporated molecular photoacid generators. Exposure of the ordered nanostructured films to UV light enabled dose-dependent (gray-scale) patterning of etchability, wetting behavior, pore volume, pore size, and refractive index. This combination of photosensitivity and self assembly should enable standard lithographic procedures to be used both to pattern and to define the structure and function of nanomaterials.

Brinker's prior awards include an R&D100 Award, the American Chemical Society s Ralph K. Iler Award in the Chemistry of Colloidal Materials (sponsored by DuPont), five Department of Energy Basic Energy Sciences Awards, the Collegiate Inventors Award, and the DOE Ernest O. Lawrence Memorial Award in Materials Science. In February 2002, Brinker was elected into the National Academy of Engineering.