Morris A. Washington Professor of Practice, Dept. of Physics, Applied Physics & Astronomy Director, Micro and Nano Fabrication Clean Room Associate Director, Center for Materials, Devices, and Integrated Systems

Focus Center - RPI Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Center of Excellence Micro-and Nano- Fabrication Cleanroom (MNCR) A state-of-the-art cleanroom and micro-fabrication facility designed to support many materials classes and sample geometries Nanoscale Characterization Core (NCC) A state-of-the-art analysis suite for studying structure, chemistry and materials properties at the nanoscale, combining established methods with unique capabilities The Focus Center is integrated within our Center for Materials, Devices and Integrated Systems (cMDIS) which has about 90 participating faculty members at Rensselaer, as well as many external affiliates, partners and collaborators. The mission of the cMDIS is to support transformative research that spans the range from fundamental discovery to systems level assembly and manufacturing in the physical / chemical sciences and engineering at Rensselaer. It also operates the MNCR and NCC facilities. Key industrial partners with cMDIS include Corning, Raith, IBM, ExxonMobil The MNCR and NCC each support approximately one hundred faculty groups at Rensselaer, whose combined sponsored research is about $20 million annually, as well as, users from about 15 external organizations. Key industrial users of these facilities include Crystal IS, Raith, Momentive, SUNY Poly, Plus Power, Benet Labs, …

THE “USER FRIENDLY” CLEANROOM THE “USER FRIENDLY” CLEANROOM * The Micro-and Nano- Fabrication Cleanroom occupies 10,000 square feet with 5,700 square feet at Class 100. * It serves as a campus-wide core facility supporting a wide range of research and education endeavors. * It is equipped with a broad complement of instruments for lithography, etching, deposition, doping, characterization, bonding and packaging. * It is designed to support many materials systems and sample geometries. * It supports about 120 internal and 15 external users annually.

MATERIALS INTERROGATION AT THE NANOSCALE MATERIALS INTERROGATION AT THE NANOSCALE * The Nanoscale Characterization Core is comprised of three major laboratories: the Electron and Ion Microscopy Laboratory, the Surface Analysis Laboratory, and the Proximal Probe Laboratory. * It is a powerful suite of imaging, spectrometry, and diffraction instruments to interrogate structure, chemistry, and other properties from the atomic- to nano- scale. * It combines both state-of the-art “standard” instruments with unique instruments and methods developed in house (e.g. Auger Electron Spectroscopy, in-situ Materials Processing in the SEM, E-beam temperature measurement) * It serves as a multi-user facility to support 90 researchers from 12 departments and 11 centers and a wide-range of research at all levels of education in campus.

Ribosome (cell protein synthesizer) Monolithic microfluidic device for time-resolved cryo-electron microscopy (TRCEM) Silicon microfluidic chip with mixer (milliseconds mixing), and gas assisted micro droplet sprayer (Fabricated at RPI MNCR) Mixing 50S and 30S ribosome subunits at milliseconds interaction times for 70S ribosome dynamic intermediate state study (Conducted at Wadsworth center and Columbia university) Cryo-EM image Ribosome (cell protein synthesizer) 50S 30S 70S Experimental set up for spraying and simultaneous sample freeze on cryo-EM grid at -127.3°F 3D Maps of 70S ribosome with subunits interaction time of ~10 ms (Ref. 3) 3D Maps of 70S ribosome conformations with interaction time of ~60 ms (Ref. 1) Reference: B. Chen, J. Frank, et al., Structure 23, 1097–1105, 2015 Z. Lu, T-M Lu, et. al., J. Micromech. Microeng. 24, 115001. 2014 T. Shaikh, R. Agrawal, et al., PNAS, 111, 9822–9827, 2014 Z. Lu, T. Wagenknecht, et al., J. Structural Biology,168, 388–395. 2009 Z. Lu, T-M. Lu, et al., Sensors and Actuators B 144, 301–309, 2010

  Press Release: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017 4 October 2017 The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017 to Jacques Dubochet University of Lausanne, Switzerland Joachim Frank Columbia University, New York, USA and Richard Henderson MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK "for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution"