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The cover story in this week's international journal Nature reports the direct three dimensional imaging of highly-structured, porous glass, at the nano scale, that has potential applications for lasers, optical fibers, coatings for computer chips, containers for the storage and slow release of plant nutrients, packaging to protect and enhance desired biological processes, and a variety of highly sensitive detectors including sensors for finding biotoxins in the environment.
As intriguing as ice crystals, but vastly smaller, the dimensions of these glassy pores, cages and channels are from one to 50 nanometers in size, a nanometer being equal to one-thousandth the thickness of a human hair.
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Scientists used an electron microscope that is two stories high, according to co-author Galen Stucky, at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Three labs in three different countries cooperated on the research. In addition to Stucky's lab at UC Santa Barbara, which fabricated the material, researchers at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan and the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology in Taejon, Korea worked on the problem. The electron microscope is located at Tohoku University.
"I like to call it three-dimensional etched glass," said Stucky, who first created the glassy material with his research group in 1994 and published the discovery in Nature. In 1998, Stucky’s research group and that of Brad Chmelka (faculty member in chemical engineering at UC Santa Barbara), created and published, in the journal Science, a better way to make the material.
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The nanotechnology, the chemistry, and the processing make possible many different three-dimensional patterns, shapes and forms that can be organized at multiple-length scales in numerous ways, said Stucky.
According to the article, "The three-dimensional structural solution makes clear, at the nanoscale level, the sizes and shapes of the pores and cages, their arrangements and their connectivity, including sizes of openings."
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This requires several series of mathematical conversions. With this new knowledge of the material, these "topographic" maps, applications can proceed. Biotechnology applications are of particular interest and are being developed with colleagues Brad Chemlka; Dan Morse, in molecular genetics and biochemistry at UCSB; and, Alison Butler in chemistry and biochemistry, also at UCSB.
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Stucky received his Ph.D. in 1962 from Iowa State University. After postdoctoral study at MIT, he held positions at the University of Illinois, Sandia National Laboratory, and DuPont Central Research and Development Department before joining the chemistry faculty at UC Santa Barbara in 1985. He is now a professor in the Materials and Chemistry Departments and a member of the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology faculty. Stucky has been active in the American Chemical Society, serving as associate editor of the Journal of Inorganic Chemistry and as chairman of the Inorganic Division.
Editors: J-peg images of the glassy structures are available by e-mail.
Nature is located at: http://www.nature.com.
Journal
Nature