Emergence of New Mechanical Functionality in Materials via Size Reduction

Abstract

Julia R. Greer received her S.B. in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1997) and a Ph.D. in Materials Science from Stanford University, where she worked on the nanoscale plasticity of gold with W. D. Nix (2005). She also worked at Intel Corporation in Mask Operations (2000-03) and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Palo Alto Research Center (2005-07), where she worked on organic flexible electronics with R. A. Street. Greer is a recipient of TR-35, Technology Review's Top Young Innovator award (2008), a NSF CAREER Award (2007), a Gold Materials Research Society Graduate Student Award (2004), and an American Association of University Women Fellowship (2003). Julia joined Caltech's Materials Science department in 2007 where she is developing innovative experimental techniques to assess mechanical properties of nanometer-sized materials. One such approach involves the fabrication of nanopillars with different initial microstructures and diameters between 25 nm and 1 µm by using focused ion beam and electron-beam lithography microfabrication. The mechanical response of these pillars is subsequently measured in a custom-built in situ mechanical deformation instrument, SEMentor, comprising a scanning electron microscope and a nanoindenter. Read our interview with Prof. Greer on MaterialsViews.com