Time: 16:00, Dec. 28, 2015

Venue: Room 102, No. 2 Laboratory Building

Speaker: Wen Zhang, Assistant Professor, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Title: Nanoscale Imaging and Quantifying with Hybrid AFM technology  

Introduction to the Lecture:  

This talk will focus on techniques and instrumentation for measuring chemical and optical properties of materials with nanometer scale spatial resolution. Conventional infrared spectroscopy is one of the most widely used tools for chemical analysis, but optical diffraction limits its spatial resolution to the scale of many microns. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) enjoys excellent spatial resolution, but has historically lacked the ability to perform robust chemical analysis.This presentation will discuss two techniques (1) AFM-based infrared spectroscopy and (2) scattering scanning near field optical microscopy (s-SNOM). Both of these techniques overcome the diffraction limit, providing the ability to measure and map chemical and optical properties with nanometer scale spatial resolution. As complementary techniques, AFM-IR and s-SNOM together provide an unrivaled capability to perform nanoscale chemical analysis on a diverse range of organic, inorganic, photonic and electronic materials. This talk will show AFM and s-SNOM applications on samples from fields including polymers,life sciences, semiconductors, graphene and nanoantennas. 

Introduction to the Speaker: 

Wen Zhang, College of Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering as an assistant professor. Wen is a licensed Professional Engineer (P.E.) in environmental engineering. Wen received his B.S from Tsinghua University in 2004, M.S. from Tongji University in 2007, and Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2011. Dr. Zhang's research integrates nanotechnology into environmental engineering to develop innovative solutions for environmental sustainability and challenges in water-energy nexus. His PhD work has extensively focused on the environmental fate and transport of engineered nanoparticles, biological interactions, as well as nanomaterial characterization at biointerfaces. Recently, Wen leads major efforts in the sustainable design of visible light-driven photocatalytic systems for harnessing solar energy, hydrogen evolution, and efficient degradation of emerging water contaminants. Moreover, he develops novel multifunctional nanomaterials for antimicrobial applications, microalgae harvesting for biofuel production, and reactive electrochemical membrane systems. So far, Wen has published more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and garnered over 1000 citations with an H index of 20. Wen is the recipient of a number of awards including the 2011 Simon Karecki Award from the Global Research Collaboration and SEMATECH Engineering Research Center for Environmentally Benign Semiconductor Manufacturing, the 2012 CH2M Hill/AEESP Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award from the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP), the 2013 CIBA/ACS Younger Chemists Committee (YCC) Young Scientist Travel Award, and the 2014 ExCEEd Teaching Fellows by American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).