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The Future of Small Chemistry professor Mike Barnes shines light on the nanotech world

–Deborah Klenotic

The bonds of chemistry: Professors Mike Barnes (left) and George Richason Jr. (right). WHEN ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR MIKE BARNES joined the chemistry department this fall, he moved into a renovated laboratory with ample windows, climate control, and generous space for the tools of his trade: spectral analyzers, high-sensitivity cameras, atomic-force microscopes, and lasers. Chemistry alumni wouldn’t recognize old Goessman 256. The lab that was built when guys and dolls went to the hop after class has been fast-forwarded to the era of nanoscience—using molecules to build devices one- billionth of a meter in size—thanks in part to the George R. Richason Jr. Laboratory Fund (see box at right). Here, Barnes and his students, working at the ethereal border of chemistry, materials science, and optoelectronics, will derive points of light from single polymer molecules and, amazingly, manipulate their behavior so they become antennae for communication. The potential applications make your head spin: Everything that uses a microchip—cars, cell phones, PDAs, and computers, to name just a few—could be miniaturized using laser-activated nanoscale circuitry. Nanocircuits could allow far larger bandwidths, giving us full wireless access to the Web and virtual-reality links through our cell phones. “We’re trying to use single molecules as the basis of nanoscale optoelectronic devices,” explains Barnes, who comes to UMass Amherst from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. “In the same way we use electrons now in a computer, we’ll use photons in the future. “There are some very smart people here at UMass Amherst who are highly skilled at making polymers, and I’ve figured out how to structure these big, floppy molecules so they can be used in nanotechnology,” says Barnes. “Using inkjet printer technology, I whip commercially available luminescent polymers—the same ones used in conventional display technologies—into uniformly oriented ‘nantennae.’ Like conventional antennae, nantennae communicate by photons.” While the nantenna “receiver” and “transmitter” are nanoscale, photonic signal transmission occurs on much larger length scales. A huge challenge in making nanoscale electronics, explains Paul Lahti, professor of chemistry, has been to find a way for the parts of these tiny electronic devices to communicate directly. “Any device that requires communication between its units could potentially use Barnes’s nantennae,” says Lahti. “It’d be the ultimate in miniaturization—nanoscale electronic components linked by nanoscopic communications networks. “People have great dreams of building quantum-level devices that use light for switching and computation,” Lahti adds, “and Mike is laying the foundation. We’ve been searching high and low for someone with his capability.” Proximity of expertise is crucial to such interdisciplinary science involving physicists, chemical engineers, and polymer people. Barnes’s work will greatly accelerate UMass Amherst’s research in chemistry, materials science, and molecular-level engineering, says Lahti. “I can say I’ve seen the future—Mike is it.” http://www.chem.umass.edu/ A NEW LAB, A LASTING LEGACY Professor George Richason Jr. is a beloved pillar of the Department of Chemistry. Now 87 years old, he has taught and advised thousands of chemistry students for over half a century and served several times as department head (among innumerable other roles). Through the establishment of the George R. Richason Jr. Laboratory Fund, the man who is affectionately rumored to have discovered the fountain of youth in his labs will also be linked to the department’s next 50 years. The initial contribution to the fund by Bill Donovan ’63 has supported in part the renovation of Goessman 256 for Mike Barnes’s research on “nantennae,” nanoscale antennae of light made out of polymers. Given that Professor Richason was on the design team when Goessman was built in the 1950s, it’s fitting that his name should advance with it into the heady nanofuture. When the fund has reached $250,000, Goessman 256 will be officially named the George R. Richason Laboratory. If you’d like to make a tax-deductable gift to the fund, please call 1-866-450-UMASS (8627) or visit www.chem.umass.edu/giving.html

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