{"id":65886,"date":"2018-01-28T14:07:05","date_gmt":"2018-01-28T20:07:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=65886"},"modified":"2018-01-28T14:07:05","modified_gmt":"2018-01-28T20:07:05","slug":"making-sense-of-surface-chemistry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/making-sense-of-surface-chemistry\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Sense of Surface Chemistry"},"content":{"rendered":"

THESE NU SCIENTISTS WANT TO HELP YOU UNDERSTAND THEIR WORK, AND THE VALUE OF OBSCURE SCIENCE.<\/p>\n

By David Thill<\/strong>
\nMedill Reports<\/em><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a language barrier between Mike Mattei and most of the rest of the world. Or maybe it\u2019s more of a dialect barrier.<\/p>\n

Mattei, a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in Northwestern University\u2019s Department of Chemistry, works on a research team studying metal surfaces at the level of nanometers \u2013 a billionth of a meter \u2013 searching for the ideal spot on the surface for chemical reactions to happen.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

He and the other members of Northwestern Professor Richard Van Duyne<\/a>\u2019s lab conduct this work on a level impossible to visualize without a specialized microscope. And its precise applications aren\u2019t yet known, so you probably won\u2019t be reading about it in the news in the near future.<\/p>\n

So when it comes to explaining this work \u2013 whether to policymakers, generally interested (or disinterested) members of the public, or even other scientists \u2013 the task can be difficult. They\u2019re speaking English, but it\u2019s often hard to understand for those not immersed in the science.<\/p>\n

SPOT\u2019s mission is to \u201cbridge the gap between the scientific community and the broader community.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But Mattei and some of his peers want to help people understand. They believe that now, when public trust in science seems tenuous at best<\/a>, it\u2019s important to engage people outside the science realm \u2013 and hopefully pique their interest \u2013 to demonstrate the value of this research.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where SPOT comes in.<\/p>\n

SPOT, which stands for Science Policy and Outreach Taskforce<\/a>, is a new Northwestern student organization of mostly doctoral students and postdocs, also open to faculty and undergraduates. According to Mattei, who serves as the group\u2019s treasurer, SPOT\u2019s mission is to \u201cbridge the gap between the scientific community and the broader community.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, SPOT\u2019s work has included policy advocacy \u2013 a heated issue, especially when it comes to topics like climate change \u2013 such as helping coordinate other Northwestern organizations\u2019 involvement in the March for Science<\/a> last April; and community outreach, like visiting senior centers to talk science.<\/p>\n

Overall, Mattei views SPOT as a way to strengthen the general public\u2019s trust in the scientific community, and to help them understand complicated science and its relevance to their daily lives.<\/p>\n

SKIMMING THE SURFACE<\/strong><\/p>\n

If one wants a challenge explaining complex, seemingly abstract research to lay people, Mattei\u2019s own field offers the perfect opportunity.<\/p>\n

Van Duyne\u2019s lab, where Mattei works, has 18 people, 14 microscopes and too many lasers to count. At any given moment, Mattei has several projects going on at once. That way, if there\u2019s a problem \u2013 maybe a laser malfunctions and has to be shipped to Scotland for repairs, as was the case one day in November \u2013 he always has another task to work on.<\/p>\n

To understand the work he and his lab mates do, it helps to have a basic understanding of surfaces, and, by extension, surface chemistry, which is their specialty.<\/p>\n

If you think of gold, silver, platinum or any smooth surface, it\u2019s not actually that smooth when you zoom in to look at the individual atoms of which it\u2019s composed. It\u2019s bumpy, because the atoms are arranged imperfectly. Think of falling snow: It doesn\u2019t all just end up nicely packed and flat. It has bumps and ridges and smooth patches.<\/p>\n

Now think of walking up your street after a snowfall: It\u2019s much easier to trek through if the walkway is shoveled. Metal surfaces are sort of like that, except instead of our footfalls it\u2019s atoms and molecules that interact with the surface.<\/p>\n

Those chemical reactions happen more easily at some parts of the surface \u2013 the shoveled parts, figuratively speaking \u2013 than others \u2013 the unshoveled parts.<\/p>\n

And what\u2019s a good way to find the shoveled part of a surface you can\u2019t see? Enter the lasers, which Mattei and his team use to examine surfaces through a technique called tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

C.V. Raman<\/a> was a physicist from India who died in 1970. He discovered the process now known as Raman spectroscopy<\/a>. With Raman\u2019s discovery, scientists can direct laser light at a sample of molecules and use the pattern it makes when it bounces back \u2013 a \u201cchemical fingerprint\u201d \u2013 to identify the molecules.<\/p>\n

In Mattei\u2019s work, the Raman spectroscopy is \u201ctip-enhanced.\u201d That\u2019s because Mattei and his lab mates use a tiny gold or silver tip attached to an atomic force microscope. They focus the laser light onto the tip, which enhances the laser\u2019s effects by acting like an antenna, zeroing the light in on a specific spot on the surface. Some of those spots are better for chemical reactions than other spots: shoveled versus unshoveled.<\/p>\n

\"\"
In this example of TERS, laser light (shown in red) is directed at the gold tip, which focuses the light on a molecule on the gold surface. (Michael Mattei)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

BREAKING BARRIERS\u2028<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy \u2013 or TERS \u2013 is relatively new. Mattei and his colleagues in 2015<\/a> and 2016<\/a> published papers demonstrating that the method can be used to study electrochemical reactions \u2013 reactions that happen on metal surfaces and are electrically driven.<\/p>\n

Now they\u2019re on to the next thing: trying to use TERS to examine electrochemical reactions at different spots on the surface \u2013 looking for those shoveled spots. It\u2019s like they built the tool, and now they\u2019re trying to see what it\u2019s really capable of.<\/p>\n

(Actually, it\u2019s more like they helped build the tool, since other labs are also working to perfect<\/a> TERS.)<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s hard to tell what TERS will be used for as it\u2019s perfected. One possibility, says Mattei, is that it\u2019s used to study surfaces in hydrogen fuel cells, the power source for environmentally friendly hydrogen cars. If you build the fuel cells using only the really good spots on the surface, the chemical reactions will work better, allowing the fuel cell \u2013 and the car \u2013 to run more efficiently.<\/p>\n

Mattei and the other members of the TERS team can\u2019t predict yet how it will impact everyday life. So getting people interested \u2013 whether they\u2019re scientists or senators or citizens \u2013 can be difficult.<\/p>\n

But scientific discoveries that show up in the news \u2013 discoveries in outer space, exciting medical findings, science fiction-like technological innovations \u2013 couldn\u2019t happen without the fundamentals. Researchers like Mattei believe that explaining such discoveries \u2013 even the complicated ones \u2013 to the public will help bridge the gap between scientists and their skeptics.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s this image of us being locked away in our ivory towers,\u201d Mattei says. He adds that if you look at popular media, it\u2019s easy to see a recurring theme: that of the eccentric and secretive scientist, whose work often leads to some kind of deadly disaster like a Frankenstein\u2019s monster, a catastrophic disease outbreak or an ill-fated dinosaur park.<\/p>\n

But as more scientists seek to communicate their work to the public effectively, through organizations like SPOT and in academic programs<\/a> devoted to science communication, Mattei and his peers hope to break down the barriers between science and the wider world.<\/p>\n

Photo at top: Obtained via Pixabay\/Used with permission under Creative Commons.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THESE NU SCIENTISTS WANT TO HELP YOU UNDERSTAND THEIR WORK, AND THE VALUE OF OBSCURE SCIENCE. By David Thill Medill Reports There\u2019s a language barrier between Mike Mattei and most of the rest of the world. Or maybe it\u2019s more of a dialect barrier. Mattei, a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in Northwestern University\u2019s Department of Chemistry, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":434,"featured_media":65887,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[3032,506,435,155],"class_list":["post-65886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-and-science","tag-chemistry","tag-climate-change","tag-northwestern-university","tag-science"],"yoast_head":"\nMaking Sense of Surface Chemistry - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/making-sense-of-surface-chemistry\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Making Sense of Surface Chemistry - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"THESE NU SCIENTISTS WANT TO HELP YOU UNDERSTAND THEIR WORK, AND THE VALUE OF OBSCURE SCIENCE. 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