Dr. Thomas Gredig, professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department, heads the Gredig Molecular Thin Film Lab. Student researchers in this lab are interested in solving problems related to thin films made from small molecules.
Material properties change completely when you make a thin film, since the surface can become more important than the inside. Thin film thickness is measured in units of nanometers; i.e., these films are tens of atoms or molecules thick.
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Graduate student Erin Henkhaus loading bare substrates into the thermal evaporator to sublime phthalocyanine thin films for optimizing pin hole reduction in flexible organic-based solar cells.
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Graduate student Fernanda Razo loading a silicon substrate for sputtering gold that will be used to explore the growth of small molecules on different surfaces with applications towards gas sensors.
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Undergraduate student Holland Karaghiaulleian using the Park XE7 atomic force microscope to study kinetoplast DNA in collaboration with Dr. Alex Klotz's lab.
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Undergraduate students Holland Karaghiaulleian and Nestor Plascencia using the Park XE7 atomic force microscope to study kinetoplast DNA in collaboration with Dr. Alex Klotz's lab. The force microscope can resolve individual DNA strands at the nanometer scale.
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Undergraduate student Nestor Plascencia loading a sample with zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 nanocrystals on mica substrates from a collaboration with Dr. Fangyuan Tian (Chemistry and Biochemistry Department) into the Park XE7 atomic force microscope. The microscope can resolve the shape and size of these nanocrystals by probing the surface with an atomically sharp tip mounted onto a cantilever in resonance.
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Graduate student Sophealena Chhom tightening the vacuum tubes to an oven that can purify iron phthalocyanine molecules.
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Dr. Thomas Gredig and graduate student Sophealena Chhom storing molecular thin film samples in desiccators to keep oxygen and moisture away from the samples. The thin films are only tens of molecular layers in thickness, which means that their properties are surface dominated. Applications include organic light-emitting diodes, gas sensors, and controlled drug delivery systems.
Thin Film Group students deposit these thin films, layer-by-layer in a controlled environment to create reproducible samples and use atomic force microscopy and x-ray diffraction to measure the structural surface properties. If their samples were as long as the Eiffel tower, then the thickness of this Eiffel tower would be half a hair's width!
Data from student projects in the Thin Film Group help to create solutions for real-world issues such as energy consumption by artificial intelligence (AI) and other data centers.
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Gredig Molecular Thin Film Group (Fall 2024) - back row: Dr. Thomas Gredig (PI), Nestor Plascencia, Holland Karaghiaulleian; front row: Erin Henkhaus, Sophealena Chhom, Fernanda Razo
