Theoritical investigations of self-assembled functional materials

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

My research interests have as their focus the field of self-assembly at solid surfaces, a central issue in nanoscale device fabrication. Advances in experimental techniques have allowed scientists to investigate self-assembly at the level of individual molecules. These investigations have provided the answers to many important questions, and brought to light the existence of new and interesting questions. Gaining a thorough understanding and therefore raising the possibility of controlling self-assembly phenomena is a problem of central importance in the bottom-up approach to nanotechnology. Many of the difficulties in developing a clear-cut picture of the structures emerging during self-assembly are due to the complexity of the systems involved. They exhibit many degrees of freedom (they can come together in many different ways) and many competing interactions which combine to produce a large diversity of final results. One way to get to a global picture of self-assembly mechanisms is to separate systems into smaller, relatively independent domains which can be analyzed individually. Our research program is aimed at isolating and investigating fundamental aspects of self-assembly, with a focus on the effect the molecular environment (solvent, surface, cooperative effects) has on the emerging structures. Some of the research will involve chiral separation on solid surfaces, but many of our results will be more generally applicable.