The National Science Foundation awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship to ME graduate student Justin Beroz in the 2011 competition. The ME department congratulates him for this outstanding achievement.
Beroz is developing a new nanofabrication technique for self-assembling nanoparticles into 2D and 3D crystalline structures based on electric-field induced liquid dynamics. Optical, thermal, and electrical properties of nanoparticle structures are highly sensitive to particle size, particle spacing, and crystalline geometry. Deterministic high-throughput patterning of these particle structures opens the door to nano-engineering macroscale material surface properties. If successful, his technique could be a novel manufacturing tool for a vast number of metamaterials, granular electronic systems, and high throughput biological sensing structures. Beroz is currently pursuing a ME Master’s degree as a member of the Mechanosynthesis Group under the mentorship of ME Professor John Hart.