18th Annual Stauffer Lectureship (Day 1 of 2): Professor Charles M. Lieber

18th Annual Stauffer Lectureship (Day 1 of 2): Professor Charles M. Lieber
Date
Mon April 1st 2013, 4:15 - 5:15pm
Event Sponsor
Chemistry Department
Location
Braun Auditorium

About the Seminar:

"Whither Nanotechnology?"

What of the future of nanotechnology? Nanoscience offers the promise of driving revolutionary advances in many areas of science and technology, ranging from electronics and computing to biology and medicine, yet the realization of this promise depends critically on the rational development of unique nanoscale structures whose properties and/or function are controlled during materials synthesis. What is the status today, and what are the prospects for the future of nanoscience and technology?

 This presentation will address these questions from the speaker’s perspective drawing from his work and that of the field broadly defined. First, bottom-up versus top-down paradigms of nanoscience will be introduced, as well the key concept of platform materials needed to drive the bottom-up approach. Second, a brief historical perspective on the emergence of nanowires will be discussed. The ‘chemical’ synthesis of complex modulated nanowires will be highlighted as a central material in nanoscience for enabling the bottom-up paradigm. Third, selected examples illustrating the interplay between nanoscience and emerging or future technologies will be highlighted.

The concept of assembling a nanocomputer, first introduced by Feynman in 1959, will be introduced, and then the advances made in the past 10+ years will be reviewed and compared to parallel advances in industry. The potential for novel low-power processors for applications from micro-robots to implanted controller in the human body will be discussed. Next, the world-wide issue of energy will be addressed through an examination of past, present, and future efforts in nano-enabled renewable energy production and energy storage. Particular emphasis will be placed on efforts to exploit novel nanostructures for photovoltaic devices and novel paradigms enabled by the bottom-up approach. Last, advances and opportunities at the interface between nanotechnology and the life sciences will be discussed. Applications of inorganic and organic nanostructures as labels for imaging and drug delivery will be examined first. Then development of nanoelectronic devices with the capability to blur the distinction between electronic circuitry and cells to create ‘cyborg’ tissues will be described as an example of using nanoscience to realize what was once simply science fiction.

"Nanoelectronics Meets Biology"
Nanoscale materials enable unique opportunities at the interface between the physical and life sciences, and the interface between nanoelectronic devices and biological systems makes possible communication between these two diverse systems at the length scale relevant to biological function. In this presentation, the development of nanowire nanoelectronic devices and their application as powerful tools for the life sciences will be discussed. First, a brief introduction to nanowire nanoelectronic devices as well as comparisons to other electrophysiological tools will be presented to illuminate the unique strengths and opportunities enabled at the nanoscale. Second, illustration of detection capabilities including signal-to-noise and applications for real-time label-free detection of biochemical markers down to the level of single molecules will be described. Third, the use of nanowire nanoelectronics for building interfaces to cells and tissues will be reviewed. Multiplexed measurements made from nanowire devices fabricated on flexible and transparent substrates recording signal propagation across cultured cells, acute tissue slices and intact organs will be illustrated, including quantitative analysis of the high simultaneous spatial and temporal resolution achieved with these nanodevices. Specific examples of subcellular and near point detection of extracellular potential will be used to illustrate the unique capabilities, such as recording localized potential changes due to neuronal activities simultaneously across many length scales, which provide key information for functional neural circuit studies. Last, emerging opportunities for the creation of powerful new probes based on controlled synthesis and/or bottom-up assembly of nanomaterials will be described with an emphasis on the creation of kinked nanowire probes capable of first intracellular transistor recordings. The prospects for blurring the distinction between nanoelectronic and living systems in the future will be highlighted.

 

About the Speaker:

Charles M. Lieber was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1959. He attended Franklin and Marshall College for his undergraduate education and graduated with honors in Chemistry. After doctoral studies at Stanford University and postdoctoral research at the California Institute of Technology, he moved in 1987 to the East Coast to assume an Assistant Professor position at Columbia University. Here Lieber embarked upon a new research program addressing the synthesis and properties of low-dimensional materials. His early work at Columbia was recognized by a number of awards, including Presidential Young Investigator Award, David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering, and a Sloan Fellowship. Lieber moved to Harvard University in 1991 as a Professor of Chemistry and now holds a joint appointment in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, where he holds the Mark Hyman Chair of Chemistry, and the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences. At Harvard Lieber has pioneered the synthesis of a broad range of nanoscale materials, the characterization of the unique physical properties of these materials, and the development of powerful methods of hierarchical assembly of nanoscale wires, together with the demonstration of visionary applications of these materials in nanoelectronics, biological sensing and nanophotonics. Lieber has also pioneered the creation and application of new chemically sensitive microscopies for probing organic and biological materials at nanometer to molecular scales. This work has been recognized by a number of awards, including the Feynman Award in Nanotechnology, ACS Pure Chemistry Award, NSF Creativity Award, and Leo Hendrik Baekeland Award. Lieber is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and serves on the Editorial and Advisory Boards of a number of science and technology journals. Lieber has published more than 200 papers in peer-reviewed journals and is the principle inventor on more than 15 patents. In his spare time, Lieber recently founded a nanotechnology company, NanoSys, Inc., with the modest goal of revolutionizing commercial applications in chemical and biological sensing, computing, photonics, and information storage.