Organic Thin Films Suspended Across Microfabricated Structures

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This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) project, supported in the Analytical and Surface Chemistry Program, aims to focus on the synthesis and characterization of stable thin films that will be suspended across microfabricated structures. During the tenure of this four-year continuing grant, Professor Fritsch- Faules and her students at the University of Arkansas will test these structures for application in novel devices for sensing and for biomimetric applications. Submicron structures will be constructed to support suspended films such as artificial biomembranes. The inorganic substrates will be both insulators and conductors depending upon the particular function they are intended to serve in these structures. Studies of these surface- confined materials will probe their stability and function with variables including electric field strength, solvent character and ionic composition of these systems. Professor Fritsch-Faules will include a host of activities that are designed to involve students in the K-12 grades. Educating these students in the high-order thinking abilities and problem-solving skills that are part of science and mathematics will be emphasized. Community Access Television and the World Wide Web will be used to disseminate such programs to diverse audiences. The ability to construct new three-dimensional microfabricated structures with wells having geometries for supporting suspended thin films will be an important outcome of this CAREER research project. The characterization of these suspended thin films will be a challenging scientific and engineering problem that depends on Professor Fritsch-Faules' unique background in electroanalytical chemistry and in microfabrication science. Her integrated educational plan is no less ambitious and it has the potential for immense societal impact upon the K-12 students in her immediate geographic area in the near-term and upon a much more broadly distributed cohort in the long-term.