Theoritical investigations of self-assembled functional materials

我的研究兴趣集中在固体表面的自组装领域，这是纳米器件制造中的一个核心问题。实验技术的进步使科学家能够在单个分子水平上研究自组装。这些调查为许多重要问题提供了答案，并揭示了新的有趣问题的存在。在自下而上的纳米技术方法中，获得透彻的理解并因此提高控制自组装现象的可能性是一个核心问题。对自组装过程中出现的结构进行清晰描述的许多困难是由于涉及的系统的复杂性。它们表现出许多自由度(它们可以以许多不同的方式结合在一起)和许多相互竞争的作用，这些相互作用结合在一起，产生了大量不同的最终结果。要获得自组装机制的全局图景，一种方法是将系统分成相对独立的较小域，这些域可以单独分析。我们的研究项目旨在分离和研究自组装的基本方面，重点是分子环境(溶剂、表面、协同效应)对新兴结构的影响。一些研究将涉及固体表面上的手性分离，但我们的许多结果将更普遍地适用。

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.