CNM Successfully Concludes Fifth Annual User Meeting: May 7-9, 2008

The opening plenary and science sessions on Wednesday morning were organized and chaired by the CNM Users' Executive Committee Chair, Paul Evans (University of Wisconsin-Madison) at Argonne National Laboratory. After a hearty welcome by Al Sattelberger, Associate Laboratory Director for Energy Sciences and Engineering, a unique view of the basic energy sciences landscape for energy research was provided by Eric Rohlfing, Associate Director of Science for Basic Energy Sciences, U.S. Department of Energy (Acting), and Director of Chemical Sciences Geosciences and Biosciences Division.

The scientific talks were then presented by researchers spanning the gamut of experience, from Nobel Laureate Rudolph Marcus (Caltech) to the invited student poster talk winner, Pao Tai Lin (Northwestern). Prof. Marcus provided a summary of his work on single-molecule studies from quantum dots to proteins, Dmitri Talapin (University of Chicago) spoke on the self-assembly and conductivity of nanocrystal solids, and Lin addressed thermally tunable ferroelectric thin-film photonic crystals, a user project with the Nanofabrication Group of CNM and his advisor Bruce Wessels.

Prior to breaking for lunch, Evans announced the newly elected members of the CNM User Organization Users' Executive Committee, Yi Ji (University of Delaware) and Gregory Wurtz (University of North Florida). Reserved tables in the lunch tent allowed for informal discussions between conference attendees and scientific staff of the CNM.

The heart of the program then began with three technical workshops:

• "Nanoscale Heterostructures" organized by Elena Shevchenko and Yugang Sun (CNM) and Talapin;
• "Emergent states at interfaces of complex oxides: What can be learned from local probes" organized by Matthias Bode and Anand Bhattacharya (CNM); and
• "Nanoscale phenomena near phase transitions," organized by Martin Holt and Jorg Maser (CNM) and Peter Abbamonte (UIUC).

A very popular event was the well-attended poster session and reception held on Wednesday evening, which was held jointly with the Electron Microscopy Center. There were nearly 40 posters for attendees to enjoy, and the student poster winner was announced as Andrey Belkin (Illinois Institute of Technology) on the topic of anisotropic superconductivity in MoGe-Permalloy bilayers within John Zasadzinski’s group and in collaboration with Kristen Buchanan (CNM).

The meeting began Tuesday evening on a very high note with a tour of the facility followed by participation in the Argonne Users Week banquet, held at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. Tours stops included explanations by staff members of the CNM hard X-ray microscope beamline at APS Sector 26 (Holt and Robert Winarski), the cleanroom facility (Leo Ocola), and the SEM/STM, VT-AFM, and VT-STM instrument suite (Nathan Guisinger, Jeffrey Guest, and Bode).

The meeting concluded Friday with a series of superb half-day short courses:

• Confocal Raman Spectroscopy (David Gosztola),
• Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (Nancy Dietz-Rago),
• Focused Ion Beam Nanofabrication (Alexandra Imre),
• Nanoimprint Lithography (Ocola), Electron-Beam Lithography (Ocola),
• Introduction to Lithography (Ralu Divan),
• Nanocrystalline Diamond Synthesis, Fabrication, and Applications (Anirudha Sumant), and
• Orientation to the Nanoscience Computing Facility (Michael Sternberg, Stephen Gray, and Jeffrey Greeley).

Meeting Agenda

Nobel Laureate Rudolph Marcus (Caltech), featured speaker at the CNM Plenary Session, and Tijana Rajh (CNM Nanobio Group Leader) at the CNM poster session and reception.

Eric Rohlfing (Acting Associate Director, DOE-BES) addresses the CNM Plenary Session.

Acting CNM Director Stephen Streiffer (center) acknowledges outgoing UEC Members Paul Evans, Chair (left, UW-Madison), and Vitali Metlushko (right, UIC).