Dear colleagues,
There are only five days left to submit an abstract to 2011 MRS Spring
Meeting, and we call contributions from mechanics community to Symposium Z: Nanoscale Electromechanics of Inorganic,
Macromolecular, and Biological System. More information about the symposium, including a list of invited speakers, can be found at
http://www.mrs.org/s_mrs/bin.asp?CID=26952&DID=325646&DOC=FILE.PDF
The abstract submission is open until Nov. 2, 2010, at http://mrsspring2011.abstractcentral.com/
We look forward to seeing you in San Francisco next spring.
Jiangyu
Coupling between electrical and mechanical phenomena is ubiquitous in
nature and underpins the functionality of materials and systems as
diversified as ferroelectrics and multiferroics, electroactive
molecules, and biological systems. In ferroelectrics, electromechanical
behavior is directly linked to polarization-order parameter and hence
can be used to study complex phenomena including polarization reversal,
domain wall pinning, multiferroic interaction, and electron-lattice
coupling. The very basis of functionalities of biological systems is
electromechanics, from nerve-controlled muscle contraction on macroscale
to cardiac activity and hearing on microscale, and to energy storage in
mitochondria, voltage-controlled ion channels, and electromotor
proteins on nanoscale. More broadly, electromechanical coupling is a key
component of virtually all electrochemical transformations in which
changes in oxidation state are associated with changes in molecular
shape and bond geometry. Electromechanical energy conversion is an
integral part of processes such as triboelectricity, cavitation, and
sonolumi-nescence. In this perspective, electromechanical coupling is a
nearly universal part of energy conversion and transport processes,
forms a basis for many device applications, and thus is directly
relevant to virtually all existing and emerging aspects of materials
science and nanobiotechnology.
The ubiquity and importance of electromechanics is belied by the lack of
systematic interdisciplinary studies due to, until recently, the dearth
of corresponding nanoscale probing tools, the difficulty in
quantitatively determining the relatively small electromechanical
coupling coefficients, and extreme breadth of the areas spanning from
condensed matter physics to biology and medicine. The development of
piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) and piezoelectric nanoindentation
technique in the last decade has led to rapid advances in the
investigation of electromechanics with unprecedented resolution. In
ferroelectric materials, PFM has enabled imaging static and dynamic
domain characteristics at the nanometer level, providing direct
experimental observations on switching and fatigue, domain-defect
interactions, and nucleation mechanisms. The last several years have
also witnessed a number of spectacular advances in PFM imaging and
characterization of biological polymers, and expanding PFM capabilities
to liquid and vacuum environments. In parallel, many new concepts of
electromechanically driven MEMS and energy-harvesting devices were
developed and implemented as molecular electromotors and molecular
electromechanical systems, suggesting tremendous potential for the field
and the breadth of the impact.
The goal of this symposium is to bring together experts from materials
science, biology, and organic chemistry communities interested in
electromechanical pro-cesses; scanning probe microscopists developing
experimental pathways for probing nanoelectromechanics; and theorists
interested in fundamental mechanisms of electromechanical energy
conversion to formulate the outstanding research needs, grand
challenges, applications, and development pathways for this rapidly
emerging field.
Session topics will include (but will not be limited to):
Nanoscale ferroelectric, piezoelectric, and multiferroic materials
Electromechanically active macromolecules
Single-cell electromechanics: from patch clamp to AFM
Molecular electromechanical machines
Piezoelectricity in calcified and connective tissues
Piezoelectric energy conversion in nanostructures and energy harvesting
Patterning and spectroscopy with piezoresponse force microscopy
Novel electromechanical phenomena at the nanoscale
Modeling and simulation of electromechanical phenomena at the nanoscale
Invited speakers include:
Nina Balke (Oak Ridge National Lab), Ray Baughman (Univ. of Texas,
Dallas), Kaushik Bhattacharya (California Inst. of Technology), Dawn A.
Bonnell (Univ. of Pennsylvania), Michael R. Cho (Univ. of Illinois,
Chicago), Peter Fratzl (Max-Planck-Inst. of Colloids and Interfaces,
Germany), Tony Jun Huang (Pennsylvania State Univ.), Andrei Kholkin
(Univ. of Aveiro, Portugal), Cewen Nan (Tsinghua Univ., China), Bala
Pathem (Univ. of California, Los Angeles), Gil Rosenman (Tel Aviv Univ.,
Israel), Fraser Stoddart (Northwestern Univ.), Zhigang Suo (Harvard
Univ.), Nagarajan Valanoor (Univ. of New South Wales, Australia), Zhong
Lin Wang (Georgia Inst. of Technology), and Yichun Zhou (Xiangtan Univ.,
China)