10-01 :: January 2010
nanotimes
37
News in Brief
Professor Venkateswara Bommisetty in SDSU’s
Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer
Science, USA, will build a new photoactivated
scanning probe microscopy tool that makes
significant improvements on the existing scanning
probe microscope. “It will simultaneously measure
efficiency-limiting factors by identifying defects,
their structure and locations in a wide variety of
solar cells, that existing microscopes are not able
to do,” Bommisetty said. “This instrument will also
probe the light-energy conversion mechanisms in
Star-shaped polymers can repair their arms using a
Diels-Alder reaction.
other optoelectronic devices such as light-emitting
© Royal Society of Chemistry/Russell Johnson
diodes.” The new equipment will be developed
by an SDSU team under Bommisetty’s leadership.
Bommisetty received $456,000 for development The methacrylate polymer has vulnerable long
of the scanning probe microscopy tool so that arms which be broken off if stressed reducing
he and his colleagues can study photoactivated performance. The research team found they could
processes – processes activated by light – at the add a particular chemical combination to the
nanoscale. The grant is from the National Science polymer’s backbone which, almost like a starfish,
Foundation. SDSU and its Department of Electrical which allow broken arms to reform via a “Diels
Engineering and Computer Science are supplying Alder cycloaddition reaction” in a self healing
an additional $200,000 to make a total project of reaction. The team now plan to ‚optimise the
about $650,000. chemistry before passing it on to their industrial

http://www.sdstate.edu/news/articles/scanningprobetool.cfm collaborators, Lubrizol.
Jay A. Syrett, Giuseppe Mantovani, William R. S. Barton,
David Price and David M. Haddleton: Self-healing poly-
A research team, led by Prof. David Haddleton, mers prepared via living radical polymerisation, In: Poly-
of the British University of Warwick (Department mer Chemistry, DOI:10.1039/b9py00316a:
of Chemistry) has created self-healing polymers

http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/b9py00316a
that could extend the lifetime of automotive

http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/PY/index.asp
oils. These polymers are suitable to add to lubri-
cants and could maintain the physical properties Scientists from the MESA+ Institute for Nano-
of engine oils for longer, they claim helping engine technology of the University of Twente and the
efficiency. The scientists have now designed a self- FOM Foundation have succeeded in transferring
healing, star-shaped polymer for use as a viscosity magnetic information directly into a semicon-
modifier. ductor. For the first time, this is achieved at room
temperature. This breakthrough brings the deve-