POTSDAM -- Clarkson University assistant professor of chemical & biomolecular engineering Zijie Yan has been awarded $1 million by the W. M. Keck Foundation to pursue cutting-edge research in nanoscience, the study and application of extremely small things.

Nanoscience or nanotechnology is science, engineering, and technology conducted at the nanoscale -- about 1 to 100 nanometers. One nanometer is a billionth of a meter. There are 25.4 million nanometers in an inch.

Yan's research team includes collaborators University of Chicago Professor of Chemistry Norbert F. Scherer and Argonne National Laboratory Senior Chemist Stephen K. Gray.

The team’s project, "Light-Driven Self-Organization of Reconfigurable Artificial Nanomaterials," has the potential to solve one of the greatest unaddressed challenges in nanoscience: the dynamic, directed, precise self-assembly of nanoscale "building blocks" into designed architectures.

"In addition to the new science and applications that we hope will come from this project, we also look forward to the exceptional educational opportunities, which it will provide for our students," said Yan.

The ability to readily reconfigure nanoscale building blocks into different architectures, as if they were Lego pieces, has enormous potential for the field of materials science. But current assembly approaches do not offer this flexibility.

This project will address this challenge by exploiting light-driven self-organization to create materials with customized, reconfigurable structures and properties.

The research team will use both an experimental and computational approach. Computationally, they will use electrodynamics simulations to design optical fields and optimize optical binding potentials over a multi-particle system. Experimentally, they will shape optical fields to direct the assembly using laser beams whose intensity, phase, and polarization can be modulated.

Integrating these two approaches will enable real-time light beam-shaping via computer-controlled wavefront modulators to manipulate designed optical fields instantly.

This technique could make feasible new types of reconfigurable, artificial nanomaterials consisting of unusual crystalline or quasicrystalline optical matter. These artificial nanomaterials have the potential to enable new applications, like non-surface-enhanced spectroscopy for molecular diagnostics, and tunable optical elements, such as wavelength-selective mirrors, filters, and polarizers.

The research team has worked and published together since Yan was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago. Yan is at the forefront of optical trapping and manipulation techniques using structured light. He received a dual bachelor of science degree in materials science & engineering and computer science, and his master of science in physical electronics from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China.

Based in Los Angeles, the W. M. Keck Foundation was established in 1954 by the late W. M. Keck, founder of the Superior Oil Company. For more information, please visit www.wmkeck.org.