Graduate student Harlan Heilman won the Neville B. Smith Award for 1st Place in the ALS Student Poster Competition.
“Combining DFT-based optical models with resonant x-ray reflectivity to measure orientation at buried interfaces.”
As part of the award, Harlan gave a plenary talk the next day to over 200 people at the main morning session for the ALS User’s Meeting.
Current graduate student Devin Grabner and former student Dr. Thomas Ferron (2019) were invited to speak on the Early Career Panel at the 2024 Advanced Light Source (ALS) Users Meeting. Devin Grabner was recently hired part-time by the Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division while finishing his last year of graduate school. Dr. Ferron is finishing his second Post-Doc position at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and will be transitioning to a staff scientist position either there or at the ALS.
The panelists were scientists from Industry, Academia, DoE Laboratory (Ferron), and DoD Laboratory (Grabner). There was a lot of positive engagement with well-received responses from the panel members.
Short bios on each panelist can be found here: https://als.lbl.gov/2024-user-meeting-speakers/#earlycareer
Devin Grabner, a member of our group, has dedicated the past few academic years to developing an “Academia to Industry” colloquium series for the physics department, which has since expanded to become a university-wide speaking event. As a result of his efforts to bring these resources to our department and university, Dr. David Giltner, the Founder/CEO of Turning Science, requested an interview with Devin. The purpose of the interview is to showcase Devin’s work as an example to inspire other students to take similar initiatives in preparing for careers outside of academia. The interview will be featured on various platforms, including LinkedIn, blog posts, speaking engagements, and potentially in Dr. Giltner’s series of books, which comprise interviews with scientists from around the world.
A blog post by Dr. Gilnter featuring an excerpt from the interview can be viewed here.
Graduate students Harlan Heilman, Acacia Patterson, and Tanner Melody presented their current research at the 78th Annual Northwest Regional Meeting (NORM) of the American Chemical Society, held this year at WSU. Our summer REU student Sydney Pfleiger was also able to attend, providing her with a unique opportunity to learn about other fields of research outside of the work she is doing this summer.
Gradstudents Acacia Patterson and Tanner Melody presented their work at the Spring MRS meeting in Seattle. Alumnus REU student Ally Hurd also joined the group to present her project, extended at her home institution Macalester College, MN with her mentor Prof. James Doyle. Prof. Collins also presented an invited talk in the Symposium “Beond 20% Efficiencies with Organic Solar Cell Devices”.
Graduate student Devin Grabner’s work on characterizing in-situ nanostructure and loading of novel polysoap micelles has been published in Langmuir. The work reveals the impressive capture and loading of aromatic cargo for therapeutics and water purification. In-situ characterization shows this is due to an open corona structure likely controlled through macroion charging. The work titled “Molecular weight-independent “polysoap” nanostructure characterized via in-situ resonant soft X-ray scattering” was conducted in collaboration with Dr. Phillip Picket at the University of Southern Mississippi and NIST as well as former Collins Lab postdoc Dr. Terry McAfee now at Berkeley National Laboratory. Congratulations to all authors!
Read the article Molecular Weight-Independent “Polysoap” Nanostructure Characterized via In Situ Resonant Soft X-ray Scattering | Langmuir (acs.org)
Undergraduate physics majors Chris Lum and Elijah Allen presented posters of their thesis work in the Collins lab at the WSU Physics and Astronomy Fall 2023 Symposium.
Chris’ thesis is titled “Charge mobility of organic semiconductors.” Chris measured the hole mobility in the OLED polymer F8BT using the space charge limited current technique on devices he fabricated.
Elijah’s thesis is titled “Comparing solvent processes for organic solar cells.” Elijah measured radiative and non-radiative voltage losses in solar cells printed via different solvents using absorption spectroscopy and quantum efficiency techniques.
Congratulations to Chris and Elijah!
Graduate student Acacia Patterson has successfully defended her Master’s Thesis Project titled “Morphology-driven comprehensive charge loss analysis of organic photovoltaics processed with non-halogenated solvents.” Her project focused on quantifying all fundamental losses in the model system PCDTBT:PCBM and correlating these to morphological changes from replacing the traditional toxic halogenated solvent processing with non-halogen processing. She plans to publish this work and continue on in the lab for a PhD in Materials Science. Congratulations Acacia!
New work on a better processing additive for OPVs lead by gradstudent Obaid Alqahtani has been published in ACS Energy Letters. The highest OPV efficiencies, now reaching 20% solar power conversion efficiency, are obtained by solvent additives that enhance nanodomain/crystallinity formation, but often result in runnaway crystallization with small processing fluctuations. the new work shows that a new solvent additive eliminates this problem while still enhancing device performance. Gradstudent Awwad Alotaibi as well as REU undergraduate student Michael Burnes are coauthors on the study, which was published in the American Chemical Society’s lead journal for energy research. Congratulations Obaid and coauthors!
Devin Grabner played a dual role at this year’s Advanced Light Source (ALS) User Meeting & Visioning Workshops. As a member of the Users’ Executive Committee, he helped organize the week’s plenary talks, events, and workshops, which celebrated the 30th anniversary of the first light and discussed the future of the ALS. In addition, Devin was invited to present his cutting-edge research on the development of a Liquid In-Situ Resonant Soft X-ray Scattering technique during the “X-Ray Scattering for Complex Materials and Interfaces at the ALS: Data Acquisition and Analysis” tutorial on the first day of the User Meeting. The meeting tutorials and visioning workshops were valuable opportunities to exchange ideas and insights on the latest developments in the field.
One of the highlights of the event was a lunch meeting with Dr. Dava Keavney, the Program Manager for X-ray Light Sources at the U.S. Department of Energy – Scientific User Facilities. Devin was among the group of researchers invited to discuss current U.S. Department of Energy policies and positions related to X-ray Light Sources such as the ALS. The photo below pictures the group, including Devin, and Dr. Dava Keavney (far right).
