June 19, 2006

Future 'Poets,' Scientists Learn About Nanoscience at BNL

Whether they want to be speech therapists or chemists, all students can benefit from learning about nanoscience. That's the mantra of National Synchrotron Light Source user Anatoly Frenkel, who taught two courses on the subject this summer leading up to a week of hands-on research at BNL for eight students and eight research assistants from Yeshiva University.

Participants in the Yeshiva University nanoscience courses at the NSLS

The six-week courses, "Discover Nanoscience" and "Nanoscience for Poets" attracted students with majors ranging from history to computer science. "We want them to become aware of the most important problems in modern science," said Frenkel, who taught the courses along with fellow Yeshiva professors Gabriel Cwilich and Fredy Zypman.

The students worked in teams on the design, synthesis, manipulation and characterization of nanoparticle catalysts, which are key components of hydrogen fuel cells. "We designed the course around some activities that students could do from beginning to end," Frenkel said.

The courses began in late May with introductory lectures and labs at the Yeshiva campus, in New York City, in order to get participants up to speed with the concepts of nanoscience and nanotechnology. Students then prepared thiol-stabilized Pd nanoparticles for their research.

The course was a collaboration between Yeshiva University, the School of Engineering at Stony Brook University, and the Synchrotron Catalysis Consortium at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The Stony Brook portion of the course was run by professor Miriam Rafailovich and a group consisting of Stony Brook and Yeshiva research assistants.

The focal point of both courses was a weeklong stay at Brookhaven, which started on June 19. On NSLS beamline X11A, students analyzed their samples using x-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) spectroscopy. Short trips also were made to Stony Brook University, where students characterized their nanoparticles with electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy.

The efficiency of hydrogen fuel cells correlates with the ability of their catalysts to absorb and/or adsorb hydrogen. The students studied the effect of hydrogenation of fuel cell performance by changing the size of their Pd samples. One of the most exciting parts of the courses is that actual data was collected, Frenkel said. A mini conference with presentations served as the final exam for the students, and their results will be presented in Boston this November at the annual meeting of the Materials Research Society.

Frenkel held a similar course in 2003 on experiments in modern physics and plans to expand the nanotechnology courses in future years.

"Some students go into sciences without knowing too much what the day-to-day research is like because they didn't have any opportunity to learn how serious research is different from undergraduate work. And then they're disappointed and find out later in their lives that research is not what they wanted to do," Frenkel said. "We can help show them what it's like and help them make a decision, no matter what that decision is."

ARTICLE BY: Kendra Snyder