New chemistry prof takes tiny particles to extremes
by Susan Griffith
Can the element gold be red? Clemens Burda, CWRU's new assistant professor of chemistry, will answer that question with a definite "yes."
Burda is among a group of CWRU researchers interested in the properties of materials on a nanoscale between the range of molecular and bulk size. When gold is scrutinized with femtosecond laser technology, it is not only red but a deep red; and its color can be fine-tuned.
One can see that deep red by looking at stained glass windows where glass
makers for hundreds of years have inadvertently used nanoparticles to
color glass, Burda explained. But this property was only recently discovered
through the use of new technologies that enable chemists and others to
look at materials on such a tiny scale.
"Every time you look at a new nanomaterial, you actually find properties that are unexpected," Burda said.
Those unexpected properties have the potential to impact a variety of fields from medicine to the development of faster and smaller optic communication and optical computing systems.
Burda is collaborating with Maryann Fitzmaurice and Stan Gerson from the School of Medicine to use these nanoparticles to design compounds to deliver medicines directly to the sites of cancerous tumors. These compounds have the potential to replace the less-targeted delivery of chemotherapy treatments. Whether a nanosystem is light or heat sensitive, magnetic or equipped with radiation particles, may aid in combating cancer locally where the tumor is killed by heat, light or radiation and then easily flushed from the body.
"These are visions that we are trying to realize," Burda said. "All these properties are carefully investigated, and now we are beginning to create something useful."
Burda said one of the most direct applications of new nanomaterials will be in nanocomputing where the photon will replace the electronics. This will facilitate much faster computations with a capacity to store far more information than the current microelectronics technology.
Also, as engineers design micro motors or MEMS technology, they will need nanoparts in the construction, according to Burda. As a result, he has formed collaborations with Frank Ernst from material science and Massood Tabib-Azar from electrical engineering to create materials for nanobatteries that will operate these new micro motors. The researchers are looking at materials that are light sensitive and can be deposited on the battery's surface to power micro motors.
"There are no limitations and no properties that cannot be enhanced by using this approach," Burda said. "The whole science is in its infancy. All this sounds like science fiction. But if you get to know how you can control these properties, it is realistic and exciting to see it happen."
Burda's research focuses on discerning the unique properties of molecules and materials. Nanomaterials are made in a variety of shapes from spheres such as the well-known, many-sided fullerene (a carbon atom cluster) to tubes, rods and materials with branches and networks.
Burda graduated with his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Basel in Switzerland in 1997, the same year science gave birth to the study of modern nanochemistry.
