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"Perfectly hydrophobic" surfaces have been developed by McCarthy and are being applied to low friction motion and lubrication McCarthy and Crosby. Shown in the image is an "18-wheel vehicle", prepared by treating a dimethyldichlorosilane-treated quartz plate with UV/ozone through a mask containing 18 hexagonally arrayed 1 mm diameter holes spaced by 4 mm on center.

Normally, well, flaws are bad. But through a newly developed technique of microcontact insertion printing, Penn State researchers can use the flaws in a selfassembled monolayer to place individual isolated molecules in predetermined patterns on a gold substrate. A self-assembled monolayer is a tightly packed wellordered array of molecules covering a surface, all tilted to one side like a cornfield in a windstorm.

The vortex state of a magnetic nanoring has special attributes of no magnetic poles nor stray fields. The circulatory magnetization can have two chiralities:, left-handed or right-handed, for storing "0" and "1", as shown in Fig. 1. Fig. 1: Two chiralities of a magnetic nanorings for storing "1" and "0".

Molecules come in well-defined lengths: Penn State MRSEC researchers have invented a technique called "Molecular Rulers," in which molecular layers of precisely defined widths coat preexisting structures and form templates for patterning new structures with ever-smaller dimensions. Advanced lift-off processing and new bilayer resists, developed in 2005, have dramatically improved the uniformity and sharpness of the nanometer-scale gaps between the parent and daughter structures. These gaps can be tailored with molecular scale precision.

Piezoeletric materials are used for a variety of actuator and sensor applications. Finding a Pb-free replacement for the popular Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 has been a major challenge for the community.

What are PPA “foldamers” nonbiological polymers that fold model systems for self-assembling nano structures challenge for simulation: long timescale and complex dynamics  New results longer chains considerably are more complex: multiple traps and remarkable complexity new methods used to predicted long timescale behavior: Markovian model and Folding@Home grid computing

Nano Lett. Doi: 10.1021/nl070613a (2007)

Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) is commonly used to manipulate and measure the magnetic moments (or spins) of electrons.  IRG-D researchers at the Princeton Center for Complex Materials (PCCM) have demonstrated a 100 fold improvement in sensitivity to the electrons’ spins by combining long-coherence donor electrons in isotopically enriched silicon with superconducting Nb microresonators.1  The PCCM researchers have previously shown that these donor impurities, each binding one electron, exhibit exceptionally