Calit2@UCI Welcomes New Materials Characterization Director
By Anna Lynn Spitzer
12.07.06-- An electron microscopist and materials physicist with more than 20 years of experience has joined the Irvine division of Calit2 as director of the institute’s materials characterization facilities.
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Jian-Guo Zheng will direct activity for the Nanomaterials Characterization and Fabrication Facility (NCF2), a newly integrated university-wide user facility managed by Calit2. NCF2 consists of four labs – the Zeiss Center of Excellence, the clean rooms and the Polymer Characterization lab, all in the Calit2 Building, and the Materials Characterization Facility, located in the Engineering Tower .
Zheng will oversee personnel and equipment for NCF2. His other responsibilities include promoting campus-wide faculty participation, and helping to plan new UCI courses to give students scientific background that will help them conduct research in the facility.
NCF2 offers instrumentation for advanced electron microscopy, polymer materials characterization and micro-and nano-fabrication research, and can be utilized for BioMEMs and analysis of material structure, composition, defects, surface and phase transition.
The facility houses state-of-the-art equipment that includes scanning electron microscopes (SEM), transmission electron microscopes (TEM) an atomic force microscope, X-ray diffractometer and cross-beam focused ion-beam microscopes, a porosimeter, nanoimprinter and specimen preparation equipment.
Prior to joining Calit2, Zheng was manager of the Electron Probe Instrumentation Center at Northwestern University , and a research assistant professor in Northwestern’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
Zheng, who received bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in solid state physics from Nanjing University in China , did his post-doctoral work at University of Bristol in the United Kingdom . He is a fellow of the Royal Microscopic Society and has published more than 50 peer-reviewed papers in a number of eminent journals.
His major research interest is in advanced electron microscopy and materials physics. He expanded his research recently into soft materials and biomaterials.
At Calit2, his first objectives are to encourage and facilitate faculty use of the lab campus-wide, and to attract more industry users from community aerospace, semiconductor, medical and biological companies. In addition, he will continually seek funding opportunities so the labs can always be equipped with the latest instrumentation. “We really hope to create a world-class facility here,” Zheng said.