Acquisition of a Cyber Enabled X-ray Photoelectron Spectrometer for Chemistry Research Education and Training

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With support from the Chemistry Research Instrumentation and Facilities: Multiuser program (CRIF:MU), the Department of Chemistry at the University of California will acquire a Cyber-enabled X-Ray Photoelectron Spectrometer (XPS) System. The spectrometer will be used by researchers at UCLA, neighboring comprehensive universities and colleagues in South America to study a number of problems in the chemical sciences. These include: (1) the electronic properties in periodic surfactant-templated semiconductors; (2) potential electrode and capacitive energy storage materials; (3) the synthesis of new types of conducting polymer nanofiber-metal nanocomposites; (4) new methods to pattern and array proteins in the nano- to micro-scale range; (5) studies of laser-assisted chemical vapor deposition of metals and binary compounds; and (6) potential methods for generating nanometer resolution patterns. The spectrometer will be used by large numbers of undergraduate and graduate students, both in instructional settings as well as in research. Access to the instrument will be widened, via cyber-enabling and other means, to students at Cal Poly Pomona and California State University Los Angeles. In addition, a research group at CNEA, Buenos Aires will use the instrumentation, remotely, in their studies of functionalized mesoporous thin films. The x-ray photoelectron spectrometers, like the one purchased under this award, allow chemists to probe the atom-by-atom structure of materials with extraordinarily high resolution and with depth profiling up to tens of nanometers. This level of detail is especially needed when probing the chemical properties of nanoscale materials, where the chemical heterogeneity changes at precisely these length scales. Without this level of detail, the progress towards new kinds of nanoscale materials will be made much more slowly. The infrastructure made available with this grant will be used in teaching and training a broad range of young scientists in important, cutting-edge, experimental methods.