New Band Excitation Technique Results in 8 New Grants for SPM and AFM Users

Asylum Research, the technology leader in Scanning Probe and Atomic Force Microscopy (SPM/AFM), has announced eight new grants for early adopters to explore the capabilities and applications of the unique new Band Excitation (BE) technique. The R+D100 Award-winning BE method is a fast and sensitive technique that allows mapping of conservative interactions, nonlinearities, and energy dissipation of materials on the nanoscale, and shows great promise for understanding and mitigating energy losses in magnetic, electrical, and electromechanical processes and technologies.

Grants valued at up to $50,000 USD per grant have been awarded to:

• Matt Dawber, Stony Brook University, "Accurate and Advanced Characterization of the Piezoelectric Figures of Merit for Tailored Ferroelectric Superlattices"
• Alexei Gruverman, University of Nebraska, "Band Excitation Scanning Probe Microscopy for Nanoscale Studies of Bio-organic Polymers"
• Brian Huey, University of Connecticut, "Band Excitation Methods for Novel Investigations of Phase Change Materials and Fuel Cell Systems"
• Jiangyu Li, University of Washington, "Band Excitation for Quantitative Scanning Probe Microscopy of Magnetoelastic Coupling in Galfenol"
• Lane Martin/Scott MacLaren, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, "Band Excitation Studies of Losses in Local Switching of Modern Ferroelectric and Multiferroic Thin Films"
• Gunter Moeller/George Papakonstantopoulos, Arkema Inc., "Band Excitation AFM to Develop a Dynamic Mechanical Analysis Method for Polymers"
• Brian Rodriguez, University College of Dublin, "Decoupling Elastic and Electromechanical Responses Using Band Excitation Scanning Probe Microscopy"
• Neil Thompson/Colin Grant/Nagatha Wijayathunga, University of Leeds, "Band Excitation AFM of Collageneous Materials"

"We at Asylum Research, along with BE inventors Stephen Jesse and Sergei Kalinin at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), are excited about the quality of the proposals submitted for our grant program. In particular, we are excited about the increase in application areas. BE was born to improve piezoresponse force microscopy, but has spread to very diverse areas from polymers, to biology and battery technology. We look forward to working closely with this excellent group of researchers to advance the BE technique and its applications," said Roger Proksch, Asylum Research President.

For more information on the Band Excitation technique and grants, click here.