Event
Bioengineering Seminar Series: Taylor Woehl
Friday, September 23, 2016
9:00 a.m.-10:00 a.m.
Pepco Room (1105), Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building
Silvina Matysiak
matysiak@umd.edu
Taylor Woehl
Assistant Professor
Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering
University of Maryland
Direct Visualization of Nanoscale Nucleation, Growth, and Assembly Dynamics with In situ Electron Microscopy
Nanoscale growth and assembly phenomena are ubiquitous to many important natural, synthetic, and living systems. For instance, biomineralization is thought to occur by non-classical growth pathways such as oriented attachment, while synthetic nanomaterials such as supported catalyst nanoparticles can degrade over time due to Ostwald ripening or aggregation and coalescence. The dynamics of these important processes remain obscure due to a lack of characterization techniques capable of probing these nanoscale phenomena on relevant spatiotemporal scales. In the last decade, liquid cell electron microscopy (LCEM) has emerged as a powerful tool for observing nanoscale dynamics in real-time with nanometer spatial resolution. In this talk, I will present my work on real-time visualization of liquid-phase nanoparticle nucleation, growth, and assembly with liquid cell electron microscopy. Specifically, I will discuss heterogeneous nucleation of nanocrystals on surfaces and in biomimetic protein templates as well as mechanisms for nanocrystal growth and self-assembly into one dimensional nanostructures. The talk will focus on applying kinetic-, transport-, and interaction-based models to interpret quantitative LCEM measurements of dynamic nanoscale phenomena in liquid. Future research avenues for in vitro LCEM imaging of biomolecular assembly and structure will be briefly discussed.
