Summer 2001 -- Vol. 18, No. 2

Cover Photo

Image courtesy of Vincent Crespi

A computer-generated drawing lookiing down the core of a carbon nanotube. In the ultra-small-scale world of materials science, nanotubes and nanowires have become the building blocks of the future. For scientists at Penn State, they provide ongoing experimental and theoretical challenges. 

Featured on the Back Cover:

Photo: Paul Weiss

Two Penn State researchers, Paul Weiss, associate professor of chemistry, and Amat Hatzor, a postdoctoral fellow, have developed what they describe as “molecular rulers,” which would enable the effective and precise construction of ultrametal structures in close proximity to each other. Those structures have potential uses with the further miniaturization of electronic and opto-electronic devices used for circuits, high-density data storage, and sensors. The molecular rulers allow them to fabricate metal structures in the gaps of larger structures. These field emission scanning electron microscopy images depict stages of a nanostructure reduction process.

From top to bottom, gaps between “parent” gold traces are reduced from 110 nanometers to 65 nanometers (third row, left) and to 25 nanometers (third row, right) by 10-layer and 20-layer molecular ruler resists, respectively. Thin mental wires 65 nanometers wide (bottom left) and 25 nanometers wide (bottom right) are formed, separated by precisely determined gaps from each of the parent gold traces.

(An update regarding their research can be found in this issue of Science Journal.)

To Science Journal Summer 2001 Index

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