Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Fabrication Of Gold Nanoraspberry Arrays By Soft Lithography, Christy Yu-Qing Xie

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

Nanostructures and nanoparticles have garnered increasing interest over the past decade due to their unique properties and applications. These properties include localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) and allow for surface modification. We can tune these properties depending on the nanoparticle’s size, shape, and geometry.

This work aims to fabricate plasmonic platforms through patterning gold nanoparticles (raspberries) by microcontact printing, a simple and cost-effective soft lithography technique. This is done through large-scale patterning using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) stamps to pattern an adhesion template and spatially guide the adsorption of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs).

Optimization Of The Synthesis Parameters Of Sapo-34, Adam Honchar

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

A microporous material known as SAPO-34 is a very efficient catalyst in methanol-to-olefins reactions. My project aimed to optimize synthesis parameters of SAPO-34 to reduce crystallization time in order to study the formation mechanism using In-situ NMR spectroscopy. Understanding the crystallization mechanism would allow us to make it more efficient and tailor-made to fit for other applications.

Contact Angle & Electrochemical Measurements Of Metallic Atmospheric Corrosion On Copper And Carbon Steel, Jacob J.M. Bunting, Jiju M. Joseph, Heng-Yong Nie, Samantha M. Gateman

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

Understanding atmospheric corrosion has been incredibly challenging due to the complex interplay between surface microstructures, environmental variables, and electrochemical processes. The methodology presented is being developed to apply to atmospheric corrosion models of metals and other advanced materials by observing the change in contact angle in situ as a function of corrosion parameters. Performed contact angle measurements on two industrially relevant metals (copper and carbon steel) over a 1 min to 30-day time span to track the change in wettability due to the formation of an air-formed oxide layer (aged) as a function of surface roughness.