What is this?

We are pleased to bring you the inaugural Integrated Circuit, a newsletter from the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT). The goal of this newsletter is for the CINT Users Executive Committee (UEC) and the CINT User Program Office to share announcements, reminders, science highlights, and new capabilities with the User Community. In this issue, our science highlight is from a LANL user project working with Steve Doorn and Jim Werner that was published in Nature Nanotechnology in January. Publications are one of the most important metrics for demonstrating the success of the CINT User Program. It is very important that you please tell us of any publication or news release that results all or in part from your interactions with CINT. We would love to feature one of your publications in the next newsletter, on our homepage, our facebook page, or even in the CINT Annual Report.

You can also find information below on the UEC, our new high-resolution SEM, the DOE announcement of 'America's Next Top Innovators', and statistics on the 2011B call for proposals. If there is information you would like to see in future editions of the Integrated Circuit, please let us know.

- Heather Brown and Antonya Sanders

Click here to see the pdf version of the Integrated Circuit

From the UEC

I would like to introduce myself as the recently-elected Chair of the Users Executive Committee (UEC) of CINT. One purpose of the UEC is to serve as a liaison between the user community and Center management. Therefore I invite you to contact me or any other member of the UEC regarding any questions or concerns you may have regarding your experience at CINT. Our contact information is given on the UEC website.

Linda Another tool that has been devised to facilitate good communication is this newsletter. It will describe new experimental capabilities at the lab and contain updates on the annual Users Conference, reminders of proposal deadlines, and information on the upcoming elections for new UEC members that will occur in March of this year. We welcome any suggestions for additional features that would make this newsletter serve you better.

One important matter that I would like to bring to your attention is the need for all of you to provide feedback to CINT via a questionnaire that will be distributed to each user at the end of each renewal cycle. It is hard to over-emphasize the importance to CINT of obtaining constructive feedback from every user through this mechanism. Not only is this the means by which the UEC and CINT management can become aware of both positive experiences and potential concerns, it is the primary feedback mechanism by which the Department of Energy assesses the value of CINT facilities to the scientific community. Recently, we have rewritten and simplified the questionnaire to better accomplish these goals. I sincerely hope you will take a few minutes to complete it at the end of each project cycle.

In conclusion, I thank all of you for your participation in the success of CINT.

- Prof. Linda Peteanu, Carnegie Mellon University

Announcements

CINT UEC Call for Nominations
The UEC is an organization of elected individuals from academics, national labs and industry who represent the interests of the CINT user community to CINT management. In addition, the UEC members are involved in the organization of the yearly CINT Users Conference. Each member serves for a three year term. For a list of current UEC members, please visit our website.

In the next few months, three regular members and the representative from the student/postdoctoral users will be rotating off of the committee. We are therefore asking for nominations to replace these members. Once we have compiled a roster of candidates, we will hold a general election in March in which all CINT users will be eligible to vote. Please consider volunteering to be on the ballot or nominating someone whom you think would be an effective representative. Nominations can be sent to Linda Peteanu or Heather Brown.

Call for Proposals will be open March 1-31, 2012
The Spring 2012 Call for Proposals will be open from March 1-31, 2012. Accepted projects will be active from July 1, 2012 – December 31, 2013. All 2010B Proposals will be expiring June 30, 2012 and should renew their proposal during this Spring Call if they wish to continue work on their project.

Save the Date for the CINT Users Conference
Mark your calendars - CINT will hold its next Users Conference on September 20th & 21st, 2012. More information coming soon.

Publications
If you have any publication or press release from 2011 that resulted from your work at CINT, we need to know. Please send any publication information to cint-pubs@lanl.gov. This is part of your obligation to have access to the CINT facilities.

Acknowledgements
If you are writing a journal article based on part of your work at CINT, we request that you please include us in your acknowledgements. There is suggested wording on the CINT Publications web page.

CINT User Survey
It is very important to our sponsor to obtain 100% feedback from our users on our program. If you have been an active CINT user in the last 12 months, please take a minute to fill out the survey on-line.

2011B Proposal Results
For the 2011B round of proposals, we had 77 proposals accepted. From those, 45% were continuations of previous projects, and 55% were new proposals.

New CINT Capability - High-Resolution SEM

SEM image We have recently completed the installation of a FEI Magellan 400L SEM at the Gateway. This system "delivers unmatched surface-sensitive imaging performance at sub-nanometer resolution, without compromising the analytical capabilities, sample flexibility or ease of use of a traditional analytical SEM." The main advantage with this SEM is the ability to have sub-nanometer resolution from 200 V to 30 kV. By using low voltages, only the surface of the sample interacts with the electron beam and thus very small/thin samples can be imaged without the need for conductive coatings and in the low voltage mode the beam does not penetrate all the way through the sample. Our system is optioned with a STEM detector (so we can look through thin samples, like a TEM), an EDS detector (for elemental analysis) and an EBSD detector (for crystallographic information). Unlike TEM and most STEM systems, the Magellan can accommodate large samples.

A nanowire at 50,000x magnification and at 650,000x magnification. Note the ability to
image Au nanoparticles of <5nm diameter.

"America's Next Top Energy Innovators"

On Jan. 31 the Department of Energy announced that it has started a second round of "America's Next Top Energy Innovators," a program that allows startup companies to license technologies developed by DOE's 17 national laboratories for $1,000. As part of this effort, the Department reduces both the cost and paperwork requirements for startup companies to obtain an option agreement to license some of the 15,000 patents and patent applications held by the national laboratories. Entrepreneurs and start-ups must identify the technology
of interest and submit a business plan to be considered for the program. Participants will have until December 10, 2012 to make their submissions.

Science Highlights:

CINT User Science featured in Nature Nanotechnology

Los Alamos scientists detect and track single molecules with nanoscale carbon cylinders

The electronic properties of single-walled carbon nanotubes can be altered by surface adsorption of electronic impurities or dopants. However, fully understanding the influence of these impurities is difficult because of the inherent complexity of the solution-based colloidal chemistry of nanotubes, and because of a lack of techniques for directly imaging dynamic processes involving these impurities. Here, CINT Users Jared Crochet and Juan Duque, along with CINT Scientists Jim Werner and Steve Doorn show that photoluminescence microscopy can be used to image exciton quenching in semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes during the early stages of chemical doping with two different species. The addition of AuCl3 leads to localized exciton-quenching sites, which are attributed to a mid-gap electronic impurity level, and the adsorbed species are also found sometimes to be mobile on the surface of the nanotubes. The addition of H2O2 leads to delocalized exciton-quenching hole states, which are responsible for long-range photoluminescence blinking, and are also mobile.

See the LANL Press Release.

Artist's concept of nanotubes on the liquid surface. Image from Los Alamos National Laboratory