A Letter From The Chair

Dear Alumni and Friends,

The press of other business, including a complete revision of our graduate brochure (see it online at www.physics.ohio-state.edu/grad/phys_brochure.pdf) delayed the appearance of the 2001 Ohio State Physics magazine until now. I hope you agree with me that editor Melissa Weber has done a superb job with both the brochure and this magazine and that the wait has been worth it.

Ohio State has, as have most universities across the nation, suffered from the economic downturn. This has brought some belt tightening to the physics department and a slowdown in our long-range plans for hiring. Nevertheless, the year has been a good one, as can be seen from the stories in this edition of our magazine. We retain our focus on hiring in Selective Investment thrust areas and other areas of critical need, and we have important successes to report.

It gives me great pleasure to announce that Chris Hammel, a Fellow of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, has just joined us as full professor and Ohio Eminent Scholar in Experimental Physics. More information about Dr. Hammel will appear in the 2003 magazine, due out winter quarter.

Ralf Bundschuh joined us last summer as an assistant professor in Condensed Matter Theory. Ralf’s background is in statistical physics, and his principle interest is in bioinformatics, including gene sequencing. His presence will help spearhead our Selective Investment thrust in Biophysics. Also joining the department was Sabine Jeschonnek who is teaching at Ohio State's regional campus in Lima. Her research is focused on nuclear theory, especially quark-hadron duality. Read more about our new faculty on page 23.

The ceremonial groundbreaking for the new Physics Research Building took place on May 17. You can see photos and read more about this great event on page 20. Images of the building appear on our web site at www.physics.ohio-state.edu/newbuilding. Here you can also view webcam images to follow the progress of construction.

Numerous faculty were honored with special recognition and awards this past year. These are highlighted beginning on page 8. Let me mention in particular the naming of Tin-Lun (Jason) Ho as Distinguished Professor of Mathematical and Physical Sciences and Frank De Lucia’s winning of the William F. Meggars Award of the Optical Society of America. And, in a fi rst for our faculty, Bunny Clark gave a commencement speech at Ohio State. Her address at the Winter 2001 Commencement was humorous, well received, and an inspiration to all in attendance.

I am very pleased to call to your attention Department Manager John Whitcomb’s Distinguished Staff Award. John’s work is essential to the smooth running of the entire department.

A signal event of the past year was the announcement of a gift by Robert and Winifred Smith to name the faculty seminar room in our new building. The gift is making possible important enhancements in this room, which will now be a showpiece on the atrium fl oor. Bob is the son of Alpheus Smith, for whom our current building is named. I am delighted that the Smith name will continue to be an integral part of the department.

Alan J. Heeger, a 2000 Nobel Laureate from the University of California at Santa Barbara, presented the 2001 Alpheus Smith Lecture. Dr. Heeger, one of the discoverers of conducting polymers, spoke on the topic “The Plastics Electronics Revolution.” The 2001 Smith Lecture was the sixth in a row to feature a Nobel Laureate who received his prize the previous autumn. More information can be found on page 4.

A particular high point of 2001 was the presentation of our third annual Physics Department Distinguished Alumni Award to Harold McMaster (B.S. 1938, M.S. 1939). Harold is the holder of more than 100 patents and is recognized as the world’s leading authority on glass tempering. He and his wife Helen spend winters at their home in Sun City West, Arizona, and the rest of the year in Perrysberg, Ohio. You can read more about the award and his current work on page 6.

Once again I take great pleasure in highlighting the 2001 national awards to our undergraduate majors. NSF graduate fellowships were awarded to Matt Buoni and Ilya Finkler. Ilya is now at Harvard and Matt chose U.C. Santa Barbara. Karoline Gilbert, a 2002 graduate, won a Goldwater Fellowship.

In calendar year 2001, 15 new Ph.D’s emerged from our doors. They took jobs ranging from postdocs at universities and laboratories around the world to research and development positions at startup companies across the U.S.

In closing, I report recent departures from our faculty. Phil Wigen retired last winter after a long and highly productive career at Ohio State. Belying retirement, he remains very active and visible. Two other faculty members left to pursue other interests. Maarten Rutgers is working in the private sector in the Los Angeles area, where his wife is on the faculty at USC. Yong Baek Kim joined his wife on the physics faculty at the University of Toronto.

I invite you all to stop by for a visit if you pass through Columbus.

With best wishes,

William F. Saam

Professor and Chair

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Smith Lecture: The Plastics Electronics Revolution

Dr. Claus. Alan J. Heeger, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, looks a little like a thin Santa The similarity isn’t just the wispy white beard or cheerful demeanor—it’s the twinkle in his eyes when he shows you what his electronic polymers can do.

Heeger, a professor of physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara, was the guest of the Department of Physics and the Graduate School for their Annual Smith Lecture. On Wednesday, May 2, 2001, he enthralled his audience of nearly 450 with tales of the “fourth generation” of polymers. Heeger started with the basics for his audience by answering the question: What are polymers?

They are plastics—long chains of repeating molecules. They are strong, flexible, and can be made transparent. What makes them so strong? A carbon-to-carbon molecular bond. You know carbon. It’s the “C” on the Periodic Table of the Elements. It is also the stuff in diamonds.

The long chains of molecules bond strongly to each other, but interact weakly with other chains. Aligning these chains allows for their amazing strength and makes some plastics nearly impermeable: bulletproof vests are actually plastic, as are snow skis.

Plastics are everywhere. The insulation in your beverage cooler is made of plastic, the bread you buy at the grocery comes wrapped in plastic, some of the clothes you are wearing probably contain plastic, and if you’re reading this with carpet under your feet, guess what? It probably has plastic in it.

Three previous Nobel prizes have been awarded since 1953 for work done in plastics. The first plastics were insulators. Plastic is wrapped around conducting copper wires to protect those wires from the elements. But research in the late 70s and early 80s heralded new discoveries in polymer research. By altering the carbon bond structure, the plastic became a semi-conductor. Now, instead of protecting a copper wire, the polymer structure would behave like the copper wire.

What does that mean? We already have material that conducts—copper wires work quite well to transmit electricity. But polymers offer some unique advantages. The processing of polymers is much less expensive than processing metals. They weigh less and can be made stronger. “There is still lots of work to do,” said Heeger. “But there is the potential of developing polymers with the conducting property of copper and the strength of steel.”

First uses of the new plastics include light-emitting diodes, photo diodes, solar cells, circuits, and even lasers.

Heeger and his collaborators created a device that included a thin film of semi-conducting plastic on glass. How thin is thin? Heeger showed a diagram of the device, with the film layer labeled “1000 angstroms.” An angstrom is about the size of an atom. A layer one thousand angstroms thick is about 500 times smaller than a human hair.

The device can carry information by breaking the light into pixels through a series of columns and rows often called “passive addressing.” Colors of the light can be manipulated by changing the molecular structure. By creating information sources on the film, industrial applications are enormous. Already, cellular telephone displays are being made. The thin, flexible substrate used for these holds many advantages over traditional cellular phone displays: it’s light, thin, and doesn’t break easily.

Already, applications of the polymers are spawning new businesses. Uniax, a company founded by Heeger in 1990 and bought by Dupont in March 2000, created a beautiful replica of the Nobel medal—in a thin film of glowing plastic. “It runs on a battery,” said Heeger, showing it to his audience. “And will last about 20 hours.”

The future of these substances is limited only by our imaginations. Already, Heeger is working on colored liquid plastics that promise a revolution in the printing and circuitry worlds. “Let’s just call these colored liquids something we all know,” he said. “Ink. With a polymer ink that conducts, we can begin to print circuits.”

Heeger also introduced his audience to more applications: not only can these polymers emit light, they can detect it. Heeger showed a slightly grainy digital color image of a rose, scanned by a polymer photodiode.

“We are looking at a broad paradigm shift,” he said. “This new class of materials will be heavily used all over society. The semi-conducting property as well as processing and mechanical advantages will revolutionize many industries.”

Dr. Heeger asked one final question: was all this research worth it? He presented a picture of himself, seated beside Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, “Yes!” he said.

Although Heeger admitted that he had had “quite a year” last year, between winning the Nobel and selling his company, he had to confess that this year is going well also. “Just before departing to come to Columbus,” he said, “I learned I’d been admitted to the National Academy of Sciences.”

The 2002 Smith Lecture was delivered by 2001 Nobel Laureate Eric Cornell. Details of his talk will be forthcoming in the January 2003 Ohio State Physics magazine.

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