Event

MechE Seminar: Dr. Udo Schwarz, Yale University

Friday, April 13, 2012
2:00 p.m.
DeWalt Seminar Room, 2181 Glenn L. Martin Hall
Prof. Santiago Solares
301-405-5035
ssloares@umd.edu
http://www.enme.umd.edu/seminars/index.html

Mechanical Engineering Department Seminar Series

"Materials Science on the Atomic Scale: Three-Dimensional Atomic Force Microscopy and its Applications"

Udo D. Schwarz, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Yale University

Abstract:
Many disciplines of mechanics and chemistry such as wetting, corrosion, tribology, heterogeneous catalysis, and nanoelectronics are governed by the chemical interactions occurring between atoms and molecules at the material’s surface. Therefore, it would be useful to map and quantify the interactions between a surface and a probe with atomic resolution. In the case of heterogeneous catalysis, for example, one would want to study with such a method the role and effectiveness of surface defects such as vacancies, steps, and impurities as active sites. An ability to discriminate between different chemical species would offer further insight. In this talk, we will show with the example of an oxygen-terminated copper (001) surface that much of this information can be derived from combining the new method of three-dimensional atomic force microscopy, a variant of noncontact atomic force microscopy, with scanning tunneling microscopy. The surface oxide phase features domain boundaries and a chemically distinct structure of the Cu and O sublattices that is ideally suited for such model investigations.

Biography:
Dr. Udo D. Schwarz received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Basel, Switzerland, in 1993. After working in Europe for nine years, he settled in 2002 at Yale University, where he was promoted to full professor in 2009. His research interests concern the local measurement of atomic-scale interactions and properties by applying scanning probe microscopy techniques to study problems in surface physics, catalysis, and friction.

For more information about Dr. Schwarz, please visit his faculty profile page on Yale University’s website.

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