University of Connecticut |
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IMS Associates Program Annual Meeting - May 18, 2005The Associates Program Annual Meeting will be held on Wednesday May 18, 2005. Please reserve the date. Representatives from all member companies are encouraged to attend. Attendees learn of new developments, interact with other members, and have access to IMS faculty and staff. Please contact Laura Pinatti by May 11, 2005 (earlier preferred) to let us know who will be representing your company (tel. 860-486-4075, fax 860-486-4745, lpinatti@ims.uconn.edu). The formal meeting will start at 9:00 AM and be complete by 2:00 PM. There will also be an optional tour of the IMS at the completion of the program for those new to the Program or anyone wishing to familiarize themselves with the IMS facilities.
9:00 Welcome - Ed Kurz, Associate Director of the IMS Associates Program
The most frequently used inspection methods, i.e., visual examination, dye penetrant examination, magnetic particle examination, eddy current examination, and ultrasonic examination, are, for the most part, effective and reliable. There have been instances, however, particularly in the aviation field, where the designated methods of inspection were not able to detect cracks, and as a result catastrophic failures occurred. In the aviation field, when major-accidents occur there is usually a thorough investigation to determine the cause. We are fortunate the accident reports concerning such events are made public, so that engineers can learn from the mistakes which led to an accident and take corrective action to prevent a recurrence of such accidents. The present paper discusses a number of cases wherein faulty inspection procedures resulted in accidents. These cases are based upon published reports as well as personal experiences, and will deal with the crashes which involved: a 707 freighter (visual examination), a DC-10 (dye penetrant), a small passenger plane (magnetic particle), a 737 (eddy currents), and a 747 freighter (ultrasonics).
Multi-scale and multi-phenomena modeling has aroused considerable interest in the last decade. The need for such approaches arise when a single phenomena transcends the comforting boundary of a single length scale, or when a phenomena of interest rests on a hierarchy of other phenomena. In this presentation, I will use two examples to illustrate these recent trends: modeling the macroscopically observed “leakage” currents and nanoscale dielectric behavior in dielectric material based microelectronic devices, and acoustic and electromagnetic wave propagation through artificially ordered composite “meta-material” effective media. Electronic structure calculations based on density functional theory (DFT) were used to characterize atomic and electronic level events, and these results were used in mesoscale models to investigate larger scale behavior. 10:25 Break
The IMS NanoMeasurement Lab features two commercial systems for performing Atomic Force Microscopy, a well developed technique for mapping surfaces with nanoscale resolution. By scanning a sharp probe across the surface, the topography is easily imaged for metals, ceramics, polymers, and even some biological specimens. This provides valuable details about a sample, including standard roughness parameters as well as any distribution in the size, spacing, and height of flaws and/or engineered surface structures. The imaging mechanism will be explained, and examples of topographic studies will be discussed. Beyond such straightforward nanocartography, however, is the ability to additionally measure surface properties with similar spatial resolution. Procedures have been established to analyze the local stiffness, friction, electric fields and surface potentials, magnetic fields, or even temperature gradients and thermal conductivities. Such advanced measurements are necessarily more complex, but for some systems can provide unique information that is inaccessible using more macroscopic measurement techniques. The greatest strength of these AFM variations is generally in identifying nanoscale heterogeneities, as opposed to quantifying them. Possibilities, and common pitfalls, of several property measurements regularly applied in our lab will be discussed, with an emphasis on practical imaging methods and potential results. Finally, instead of imaging a surface or its properties with high spatial resolution, the scanning probe can also be used for nanoscale lithography. This is achieved in our labs by following a user-defined pattern and applying either an increased force (“plowing”) or a voltage (“oxidizing”) at the probe-sample contact. Complex features can be defined in this manner, and later imaged using standard AFM modes as exemplified by the attached figure of the UConn crest written in PMMA with dimensions of 4 um x 4 um. It is worth noting that in AFM the true surface is analyzed, because samples do not need to be coated as is often the case for other measurement techniques. Furthermore, simultaneous transmitted or reflected optical microscopy with magnification up to 1000x is available for locating and identifying features for AFM investigation. The maximum scan size is 90 * 90 * 15 micrometers in x, y, and z, respectively, with a maximum specimen size of roughly 2 * 2 * 1 cm. Experiments in the IMS NanoMeasurement Labs are usually conducted in air, though in certain cases can be performed in vitro. 11:10 “Novel Drug Targeting and Vaccination Strategies with Peptide Nanoparticles” We are designing nanoparticles based on peptides as building blocks. This is achieved by rational protein de novo design. These nanoparticles are composed of protein oligomerization domains with different oligomerization states linked by a short linker peptide. The nanoparticles are characterized by regular icosahedral symmetry like small virus particles. Currently we are developing a prototype of self-assembling functionalized peptidic nanoparticles, which can be used as a drug targeting and delivery system for the visualization and treatment of cancer. These nanoparticles will be modified to carry a drug entity (radionuclide) as well as a pathfinder molecule on each of the 60 peptide chains of the icosahedral nanoparticle. Furthermore, such nanoparticles with regular polyhedral symmetry represent an ideal repetitive antigen display system. Surface proteins of pathogens or fragments of such proteins can easily be engineered into the peptide sequence of the nanoparticle. Notably, many surface proteins of pathogens contain coiled-coil sequences. For example, by simply extending the trimeric coiled-coil of the nanoparticle by the coiled-coil sequence of the HIV surface protein gp41, a candidate HIV vaccine can be designed. Whereas in the past, different kinds of adjuvants were tested to improve the immunogenicity of an antigen or a specific epitope, such a repetitive antigen display can strongly augment the immunogenicity of a certain epitope, thus avoiding the need for sometimes highly toxic adjuvants.
12:10 Lunch
IMS is the state mandated Institute to perform research, education and outreach in materials science and engineering. Over its lifetime of 40 years it has seen many changes in the nature of materials research. This presentation will try to address what we perceive happening over the next decade in materials research and how IMS is trying to position itself to meet the challenges. One emerging area of interest is the growing interaction between biological materials and the functional materials that have been the mainstay of IMS over its history. This includes the fast emerging arena of Nanotechnology. This will be discussed in light of the activities in the State Legislature to address the potential impact of Nanotechnology on the states future industrial well being and how IMS is in the middle of the plans. IMS will continue to do research in Polymer Science, Metallurgy, Ceramics and composites as it has in the past, but the nature of the research is changing. Important factors that push the change in materials research are the major topics such as energy, environment, changes in military requirements due to the new threats that are being faced and other areas in homeland security. IMS working with other centers locally and nation wide will be doing research to address some of these issues. The presentation will include discussion of the key points of strength that can keep IMS in the lead in many of the above areas, the faculty, students, post-doctoral fellows and staff as well as the physical building plans and maintenance and improvement of our research instrumentation. Included is plans for the continued working closely with Industry in a variety of ways.
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