NER: Multifunctional Magnetic Nanoparticles for Materials and Bio-Science Applications

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Intellectual merits of the activity: This one year proposal is concerned with the synthesis and characterization of core/shell structured nanoparticles, which provide a platform for achieving advanced materials with new functionality. This nanoscale exploratory research project aims at creating and characterizing such heterostructured nanoparticles, and gaining fundamental understanding for their growth mechanisms and applications in materials and biosciences.These core/shell-structured materials will include iron/gold nanoparticles for biosensing applications and hard/soft nanomagnets for information storage. Characterization of these compounds will include structure determination by x-ray diffraction, SEM, TEM, HRTEM, STEM, magnetometry, electrical transport, Mossbauer spectroscopy, and magnetic resonance relaxivity studies. The goals of this study are to elucidate the mechanism for core/shell formation and to be able to apply that knowledge to other advanced materials such as exchange coupled hard/soft nanoparticles, which will be the subject of a full NSF NIRT proposal.Broader impacts resulting from the proposed activity: The interdisciplinary projects described herein are designed to provide a broad training for graduate and undergraduate students in important problems in nanoparticle synthesis, characterization, and applications. The project provides unique opportunities to study artificially structured materials that are technologically important, with potential applications in magnetic imaging, magnetic recording, targeted drug delivery, nanoscale actuation, energy harvesting, etc. This research program includes collaboration between disciplines such as chemistry, physics, biology and engineering and utilizes national facilities for electron microscopy and x-ray diffraction. Selected parts of this research will also be provided to students affiliated with MURRPS, REU, and American Chemical Society SEED programs, as well as high school teachers during the summer.This NER proposal has a primary focus on Nanoscale Devices and System Architecture.