Dear Foundry Community,
From all of us here at the Foundry, we wish health and happiness for you and your families this Holiday season. May the coming year be merry and bright!
All the Best,
Kristin
Kristin Persson
Director of the Molecular Foundry
About the Artwork
This year’s holiday card features artwork submitted to our 2022 NanoArt Contest. Like NanoArt? Check out and download our 2023 NanoArt Calendar!
Submitted by Maged Abdelsamie and winning first place in the NanoArt contest. Flower-like halide perovskite crystals that are being researched for improving solar cells. The image was taken by Mriganka Singh, Maged Abdelsamie, and Carolin Sutter-Fella as part of work done at the Inorganic Nanostructures facility.
Submitted by Archana Raja. The first real space visualization of an excited electron-hole pair or exciton localized in a moire superlattice. Using TEAM I, we simultaneously image the moire exciton (yellow/green) and the lattice (purple) using a sub-nanometer electron beam probe. Work by Sandhya Susarla, Mit H Naik, Daria D Blach, Jonas Zipfel, Takashi Taniguchi, Kenji Watanabe, Libai Huang, Ramamoorthy Ramesh, Felipe H da Jornada, Steven G Louie, Peter Ercius & Archana Raja in the Imaging and Manipulation of Nanostructures facility and NCEM.
Submitted by Foundry Postdoctoral Researcher John Thomas, and winning 6th place in the NanoArt contest, this image is a schematic depicting tunneling electron-induced photon emission from a single sulfur vacancy within monolayer tungsten disulfide. The scanning tunneling microscope is capable of resolving photons emitted at the atomic scale, due to tunneling-induced luminescence and is used to observe quanrum interactions at the atomic scale. The work was performed by Bruno Schuler, Katherine Cochrane, John Thomas, and Alexander Weber- Bargioni in the Foundry’s Imaging and Manipulation of Nanostructures facility using the Createc Low Temperature STM/AFM.
Submitted by Steven Zeltmann, this image won 3rd place in the NanoArt contest. This is a simulation of a large-angle converged beam electron diffraction experiment performed on a silicon crystal. The web of criss-crossing lines that run through the pattern carry detailed information about the structure and symmetry of the crystal. Researchers can use these simulations to help determine the precise structure of nanomaterials The image was created at NCEM as part of work by Steven Zeltmann, UC Berkeley using the py4DSTEM package created by Ben Savitzky, Colin Ophus, and others, at NCEM.
Submitted by Yael Tsarfati. An orientation map of a semiconducting polymer’s thin film. The lines represent the local polymer chains orientations. The data is a visualization that is created based on diffraction patterns that are collected in an electron microscope in a technique called 4D-STEM. Color indicates chain direction and the intensity is correlated to diffraction intensity. Work by Dr. Yael Tsarfati & Dr. Luke Balhorn using the TitanX microscope.
Submitted by Beihang Yu. This is a surface contrast pattern created on silicon substrates by using electron beam lithography to pattern a polymer brush monolayer that passivates the surface. As a result we are able to have the DNA origami selectively lands in between the polymer brush lines. The research team is developing a workflow that combines the accuracy of top-town lithography and the precision of biomolecular assemblies. This will bring us the opportunity to do bio-templated large-area 2D nanopatterning with precision down to 1 nm. The image was created using the Imaging and Manipulation of Nanostructures facility and Nanofabrication facility as part of work by Beihang Yu (Molecular Foundry, Berkeley Lab), and Scott Dhuey, Boyce Chang, Whitney Loo, Ricardo Ruiz using several tools including electron beam lithography, plasma etcher, and atomic force microscopy.
Celebrating the Cultures of Our Community
The Molecular Foundry hosts staff and users from around the world belonging to a wide variety of cultures and backgrounds. This year, we’re highlighting Ireland, home to many of our staff and users.
In our holiday card above, you’ll see a picture of Newgrange, a Stone Age monument. Newgrange was constructed about 5,200 years ago (3,200 B.C.) which makes it older than Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Giza. Newgrange is a large circular mound 85m (279ft) in diameter and 13m (43ft) high with a 19m (63ft) stone passageway and chambers inside. The mound is ringed by 97 large kerbstones, some of which are engraved with symbols called megalithic art.
It is best known for the full illumination of its passage and interior chamber by the rising sun at the Winter Solstice. Above the entrance to the passage of the mound there is a opening called a roof-box. On mornings around the winter solstice a beam of light penetrates the roof-box and travels up the 19 meter passage and into the chamber. As the sun rises higher, the beam widens so that the whole chamber is dramatically illuminated.
Check out our past multicultural celebrations:
