Metal Nanoprinting
For Nanoelectronics

Grigoropoulos

When it comes to patterning structures at nanoscale resolution, direct nanoimprinting lithography can be much simpler and more efficient than photolithography. But until now it has only worked at relatively low temperatures — for example with plastics but not metals. In a recent issue of Nano Letters, Costas Grigoropoulos of the Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division and his colleagues demonstrate a new method of direct nanoimprinting at low temperatures, using metal nanoparticles. "The nanoimprinted nanoparticles can be transformed into conductive and continuous metal films by low-temperature nanoparticle melting," says Grigoropoulos. One application is ultra-low-cost, large-area printed electronics. Full story.

Carbon Flux Explorer:
Down and Back Again

Carbon Flux Explorer

Jim Bishop and Todd Wood of the Earth Sciences Division led a Berkeley Lab/UC Berkeley contingent in a successful test of the Carbon Flux Explorer (CFE) during a three-day cruise near San Diego aboard the research vessel Sproul, June 19-22. The new robotic vehicle boasts instruments custom-designed and engineered at Berkeley Lab for measuring daily variations in particulate carbon. Diving as deep as 800 meters, the CFE collected over 200 digital images of carbon-containing particles, surfacing every eight hours to transmit engineering and position information via satellite link. Next up for CFE, says Bishop, are month-long missions in the open ocean.

Follow These Tips
To Improve Receiving

To ensure the prompt receipt of packages, employees are asked to follow these guidelines: Those who are relocating their offices or labs should contact Christina DeBernardi (x4935) with their new address; personal materials should not be sent to the Lab; when contacting the Receiving Department for shipment information, have a tracking number, PO number or vendor name available. For additional information on receiving, contact DeBernardi.

Kitchen Stove Helps
Keep Darfurians Alive
By Barrett Sheridan

Darfurian with stove

As for so many of us, the genocide in Darfur was merely an abstraction to Ashok Gadgil, a scientist with Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division. But in September 2004 he got a call from the U.S. Agency for International Development. Could Gadgil design a screw press for Darfurians, the caller asked, so they could turn their garbage into biofuel pellets? "I quickly showed him that there is not enough kitchen waste in home cooking to produce much worthwhile fuel," the physicist says, and USAID dropped the idea. But the problem continued to nag at him. Eventually Gadgil decided that if he couldn't redesign the fuel, he would redesign the stove. Full story.

Bissell Wins 'Excellence
In Science' Award

FASEB 'Excellence' award

Mina Bissell of Berkeley Lab's Life Sciences Division has been awarded the 2008 Excellence in Science Award from the Federation of the American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB). This award, sponsored by Eli Lilly and Company, recognizes outstanding achievement by women in the biological sciences. Bissell received the award for creating a “paradigm shift” in her conceptualization of the “dynamic reciprocity” between the cellular microenvironment, the extracellular matrix, and 3-D tissue structure in cell differentiation and cancer.

Cosmology Workshop
For Students, Teachers

Twenty-five high school students and 10 teachers started a two-week workshop at the Lab yesterday on cosmology. The group will learn about the history and structure of the universe, its evolution, and the standard model of particles and interactions. Included in the workshop are speaker sessions with Lab physcists George Smoot, Nao Suzuki, Catherine Ihm, Nikhil Padmanabhan, Stu Loken, Eric Linder, Peggy McMahan, and Kevin Lesko. The workshop — sponsored by the Lab's Center for Science and Engineering Education and the Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics — was made possible by a grant from Stephen D. Bechtel Jr.