We are pleased to announce the preprint of our paper is up on the ChemRxiv!

Read about our journey to deciphering the hidden complexity in heterogeneous quantum dots here: https://doi.org/10.26434/chemrxiv.11349713.v1

The ChemRxiv (pronounced 'chem-archive') is a free submission, distribution and archive service for unpublished preprints in chemistry and related areas.  Marshall Brennan, PhD alum from UIUC chemistry (Fout lab) is the publishing manager. You can learn more about it here: https://chemrxiv.org/f/about

Our DETEM is being upgraded with a Gatan Image Filter (GIF) and EELS spectrometer. We are facing a couple of hickups, including a bad vacuum leak that required taking everything apart again (see picture), but we are very much looking forward to using our new baby soon!

We were honored and excited to present our Dynamic Environmental TEM to our chancellor Robert J. Jones! The chancellor was visiting to learn about the exceptional research capabilities, strong collaborations, and state-of-the-art equipment at the MRL. Allan did a great job presenting our setup and explain to the chancellor why we do what we do!

The 2018 Packard Fellows at the Monterey Bay aquarium.

Henry was selected as the awardee of the 2019 ACS Undergraduate Award in Physical Chemistry for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. We are very proud of his achievements and wish him best of luck at Stanford!

Thomas Rossi is joining our lab as a postdoc to work on ultrafast optical and X-ray spectroscopy of photovoltaic nanomaterials. He received his PhD from the EPFL in the group of Majed Chergui where he worked on charge-carrier dynamics in metal oxides and hybrid lead perovskites. We are excited about his arrival and welcome him to our group!

Omid, Allan, Ryan, Eric and Frank were able to find the exact temporal overlap between laser and electron pulses. The difference image movie shows how a short (~200 fs) laser pulse generates a plasma at the edge of a copper grid, which deflects the electron pulse (shown as a bright/dark fringes). This is the final major milestone in the DETEM development. Almost ready to do real experiments!

Yuanheng (Henry) gave a talk on his work with Cecilia on simulating charge transfer dynamics of ZnTe/CdSe core/shell quantum dots at the East Central Illinois American Chemical Society Undergraduate Conference. Well done, Henry!