• Eric Meshot Dissertation Defense

    December 9, 2011: Eric Meshot, successfully defended his PhD Dissertation “Dynamics and Limiting Mechanisms of Self-Aligned Carbon Nanotube Growth”

  • John Hart will receive the NSF CAREER Award

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    November 2011: John Hart is the recipient of a 2012 NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award.  The award was selected by the NSF Nanomanufacturing Program, and is for proposed research and education activities entitled “High-Speed Continuous Assembly of Nanoparticle Monolayers and Discrete Cluster Arrays”. According to NSF, “The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program… offers…

  • Population growth dynamics of carbon nanotubes

    M. Bedewy, E.R. Meshot, M.J. Reinker, A.J. Hart. Population growth dynamics of carbon nanotubes. ACS Nano (in press), 2011. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/nn203144f] Understanding the population growth behavior of filamentary nanostructures, such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs), is hampered by the lack of characterization techniques capable of probing statistical variations with high spatial resolution. We present a comprehensive methodology for studying…

  • 4D-CNT team featured at "Celebrate Invent"

    Our 4DCNT team was selected to present at the annual University of Michigan “Celebrate Invention” reception, which attracted over 500 faculty, students, investors, and business leaders.  Sameh Tawfick and John Hart were pictured on the front page of the University Record.  See the accompanying article.

  • SURE 2011 Student Jingjie Hu Presents "Optimizing Self-assembly of Nanoparticles by Blade Casting"

    Jingjie Hu joined the Mechanosynthesis group for the summer as a an undergraduate research assistant working with PhD Candidate Mostafa Bedewy on capillary self-assembly of nanoparticles.  In the following video she presents the results of her summer project on the study and optimization of blade casting parameters to achieve large area monolayers of nanosphere crystals.

  • Hierarchical carbon nanowire microarchitectures made by plasma-assisted pyrolysis of photoresist

    M. De Volder, R. Vansweevelt, P. Wagner, D. Reynaerts, C. Van Hoof, and A. J. Hart.  ACS Nano (in press), 2011. [http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nn201976d] We present a new approach for the fabrication and integration of vertically aligned forests of amorphous carbon nanowires (CNWs), using only standard lithography, oxygen plasma treatment, and thermal processing. The simplicity and scalability…

  • Continuous high-yield production of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes on 2D and 3D substrates

    Roberto Guzman de Villoria, A. John Hart, and Brian L. Wardle. ACS Nano (in press), 2011. [http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1021/nn2008645] [PDF]   Vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (VACNTs) have certain advantages over bulk CNT (carbon nanotubes) powders and randomly-oriented CNT mats for applications in flexible electronic devices,  filtration membranes, biosensors and multifunctional aerospace materials. Here, a machine and…

  • Non-destructive characterization of structural hierarchy within aligned carbon nanotube assemblies

    Eric Verploegen, A. John Hart, Michael De Volder, Sameh Tawfick, Khek-Khiang Chia, and Robert E. Cohen. Journal of Applied Physics (in press), 2011. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3584759] [PDF]   Understanding and controlling the hierarchical self-assembly of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is vital for designing materials such as transparent conductors, chemical sensors, high-performance composites, and microelectronic interconnects. In particular, many…

  • Structurally programmed capillary folding of carbon nanotube assemblies

    Sameh Tawfick, Michael De Volder, and A. John Hart. Langmuir 27(10):6389-6394, 2011. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/la200635g] [PDF]   We demonstrate the fabrication of horizontally aligned carbon nanotube (HA-CNT) networks by spatially programmable folding, which is induced by self-directed liquid infiltration of vertical CNTs. Folding is caused by a capillary buckling instability and is predicted by the elastocapillary buckling…

  • Justin Beroz awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

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    April 2011: Justin Beroz is awarded a 2011 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship!