News Category
Professor touts faster, cheaper way to test for explosives
Jul. 28, 2014—A Vanderbilt University professor has come up with a faster and less expensive way to test for explosives residue on surfaces. Prof. Sharon Weiss has modified white gold leaf paper so that its surface provides signal amplification of 100 million times – so that a laser and detector to identify the chemical molecules of whatever...
2014 Summer Nanoseminar Series
May. 30, 2014—Organized by: J. Scott Niezgoda WHAT IS VINSE SUMMER “NANOSEMINAR”? A seminar series in VINSE, 9 amazingly interesting seminars have been scheduled for this summer. During each seminar, two students/post-docs from different research groups will talk about their projects dealing with nanofabrication and science/technology as related to it. The focus of the seminar is...
Liberating devices from their power cords
May. 19, 2014—Imagine a future in which our electrical gadgets are no longer limited by plugs and external power sources. This intriguing prospect is one of the reasons for the current interest in building the capacity to store electrical energy directly into a wide range of products, such as a laptop whose casing serves as its battery,...
VINSE High School Field Trip program Fall 2013 & Spring 2014
May. 15, 2014—Small groups of students from across middle Tennessee high schools learned how to squeeze electricity from a blackberry. The students mashed blackberries, extracted their juice, soaked an electrode in the juice, coated another electrode with graphite and clipped them together to make a solar cell. After the solar cells were finished, the students got to measure...
David Wright named Stevenson Chair of Chemistry
May. 7, 2014—VINSE Faculty David Wright named Stevenson Chair of Chemistry. KEEP READING>
How to create nanowires only three atoms wide with an electron beam
Apr. 28, 2014—Junhao Lin, a Vanderbilt University Ph.D. student and visiting scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), has found a way to use a finely focused beam of electrons to create some of the smallest wires ever made. The flexible metallic wires are only three atoms wide: One thousandth the width of the microscopic wires used...
Construction of new VINSE facilities in new Engineering and Science Building set to begin May 2014
Apr. 28, 2014—Vanderbilt’s Board of Trust has approved construction of a seven-story engineering and science building designed to foster project teamwork and offer programs, instrumentation areas and core research space that will promote interdisciplinary work. A clean room and advanced imaging facilities will provide capabilities to advance discoveries in areas such as nanocomposites, smart materials, advanced energy...
VINSE Director Sandra Rosenthal named winner of 2014 SEC faculty achievement award
Apr. 9, 2014—Sandra Rosenthal, Jack and Pamela Egan Professor of Chemistry at Vanderbilt, is a recipient of the 2014 SEC Faculty Achievement Award. These annual awards recognize a faculty member from every Southeastern Conference university who demonstrates outstanding records of teaching, research and scholarship. KEEP READING>
IMS graduate student Alice Leach travels to Jerusalem to visit the Banin laboratory
Mar. 26, 2014—Janet Macdonald wins the Bergmann Memorial Award for young scientists Assistant Professor Janet Macdonald recently travelled to the Israeli Embassy in Washington to accept the Bergmann Memorial Award from the United States-Israel Binational Foundation. The award adds $5,000 to a $75,000 research grant to conduct collaborative research on hybrid nanoparticles with Professor Uri Banin from...
Nanoscale optical switch breaks miniaturization barrier
Mar. 13, 2014—Graduate student Kent Hallman checking the sample alignment the vapor deposition machine located in Vanderbilt Institute for Nanoscale Science and Engineering’s clean room. (Joe Howell / Vanderbilt) An ultra-fast and ultra-small optical switch has been invented that could advance the day when photons replace electrons in the innards of consumer products ranging from cell phones...