Michael Chorny earned his PhD in pharmaceutical sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2009, he became faculty at the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. His research focuses on development and evaluation of drug, gene and cell therapeutics for treating cancer and cardiovascular disease.

James J. Hickman is the Founding Director of the NanoScience Technology Center and a Professor of Nanoscience Technology, Chemistry, Biomolecular Science, Material Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Central Florida. Previously, he was the Hunter Endowed Chair in the Bioengineering Department at Clemson University. Dr. Hickman has a Ph.D. from MIT in Chemistry. For the past thirty years, he has been studying the interaction of biological species with modified surfaces, first in industry and in then in academia. He has worked at NSF and DARPA in the area of biological computation. He is also the founder and current Chief Scientist of a biotechnology company, Hesperos, that is focusing on cell-based systems for drug discovery and toxicity. He has 159 publications and 20 book chapters, in addition to 29 issued patents. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biomedical Engineers (2004), the American Vacuum Society (2007) International Academy of Nanobiotechnology (2019) and the National Academy of Inventors (2020).

The utilization of multi-organ human-on-a-chip or body-on-a-chip systems for toxicology and efficacy, that ultimately should lead to personalized medicine applications, is a topic that has received much attention recently for drug discovery and subsequent regulatory approval. Hesperos has been constructing these systems with up to 6 organs and have demonstrated longterm (>28 days) evaluation of drugs and compounds, that have shown similar response to results seen from clinical data or reports in the literature. Application of these systems for ALS, Alzheimer’s, rare diseases, diabetes and cardiac and skeletal muscle mechanistic toxicity will be reviewed. The development of an in vitro PDPK modeling that predicts in vivo results will also be presented. The system utilizes platform screens from functional readouts. Hesperos has received Phase II and Phase IIB SBIR grants from NCATS to apply Advanced Manufacturing Technologies and automation to these systems in collaboration with NIST in addition to support form pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies. This talk will also give results of six workshops held at NIH to explore what is needed for validation and qualification of these new systems.

Dr. Tannenbaum is originally from Israel where she received a B.Sc. in chemistry and physics from the Hebrew University, an M.Sc. in physical chemistry from the Weizmann Institute of Science. and a D.Sc in chemical engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich. She is a full professor in the Department of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering and a member of the Stony Brook Cancer Center at Stony Brook University in New York. To date she has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles, reviews and refereed conference proceedings. She is the recipient of numerous awards such as the best paper award in the 1st International Conference on Applied Physics (2003), the Sigma Xi best thesis advisor award (2004), the MRS Fall 2006 Meeting outstanding paper award (2007), 1st prize in the SAIC best paper competition (2007, 2010 and 2012) and best paper award in the 6th Symposium of Frontiers in Polymers (2019). She is a member of the Advisory Board of several professional journals, on the steering and program committees of numerous professional meetings and a frequent keynote and plenary speaker at national and international conferences. Dr. Tannenbaum’s areas of interest are soft condensed matter and complex fluids, biomedical applications of Raman spectroscopy, nanocomposites from renewable resources, biomaterials for bone implants and tissue engineering, bio-adhesion, nanofluids, bio-nanostructures and nanoplatforms for cancer diagnostic and targeted drug delivery.

We use surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), a novel non-destructive and sensitive imaging modality, for the exploration of the structure and chemical composition of biological materials and probe its efficacy as a tool for the delineation of cancer tissue, histological analysis of biopsies, in vivo detection of tumors and intraoperative imaging. This work deals with the development of a comprehensive Raman imaging platform by measuring the SERS spectra of healthy, benign, and cancer cells at given spatial intervals over the whole area of the tissue of interest, keeping a precise correlation between the location of the measurement and the resulting spectrum. The selective imaging of the tumor is based on the selection of relevant and unique Raman bands and their intensities as a function of sampling location. Based on this information, 2D and 3D images of the relevant tumors may be constructed using novel and unique imaging techniques. In order to gain confidence in the accuracy and reliability of this novel technique, validation by independent alternative methods will be required. For this purpose, we selected breast cancer as a model system and focus on the correlation between documented and measurable metabolic compounds associated with this cancer and the tissue imaging data obtained with SERS Raman. In this work we investigated the surface plasmon resonance and surface-enhancing Raman capabilities of various morphological permutations of star-like Au nanoparticles. The morphological variations were achieved by changing the synthesis temperature and were confirmed with multiple characterization techniques. These variations yielded a novel particle geometry that has quasi-fractal branches. The relative enhancement factors of these nanoparticles as signal enhancers in surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy has been shown to be closely correlated to the extent of branching and particle size of the Au nanostructures

Researcher at SINTEF (Norway) since 2019, and previously working in CEA France. Her main interest lies in the physical-chemical assessment of nanomaterials and nanopharmaceuticals for safety and quality assessment and in the standardization of characterization methods for regulatory purposes. She is the chair of the safety and characterization WG of the Nanomedicine European Technology platform and active member of the ASTM E 56 where she is contributing to the first standard test methods on MD-AF4 for testing of liposomal products

Asymmetric-flow field-flow fractionation (AF4) has been recognized as an invaluable tool for the characterisation of nano-enabled therapeutics and vaccines. To apply MD-AF4 in the pharmaceutical setting, robust and high-quality standard operating procedures (SOPs) needs to be developed, tailored on specific sample properties, and according to identifies parameters necessary to validate methods. We will describe how a unique international collaboration led to the development of robust SOPs for the characterisation of liposomal products and lipid-based nanoparticles for RNA delivery (LNP-RNA). Examples of how MD-AF4 methodologies have been validated and used for the analysis of key quality attributes, such as particle size, shape, stability, particle concentration, aggregation and drug loading will be described. MD-AF4 is used as a successful example to describe the pathway from SOPs to standardisation and how the work done on liposomal products can open a fast track for the development of methods for LNP-RNA.

Jun Huang is an assistant professor of the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, Committee on Cancer Biology, Committee on Immunology, and the Graduate Program in Biophysical Sciences of the University of Chicago. His lab performs basic and translational research with the objective of developing effective vaccines and cell immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer, infection, and autoimmunity. He carries out basic immunological research, focusing on molecular mechanisms of T cell recognition and signaling at the single-molecule level. He performs systems immunology, studying the development, differentiation, and metabolism of T cells at the single-cell level. He engineers CAR-T cells, aiming at the treatment of cancer and autoimmunity. He develops new biomaterials, enabling the detection, profiling, and manipulation of T cells and other immune cells for diagnosis and treatment

SARS-CoV-2 enters host cells through its viral spike protein binding to angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors on the host cells. Here, we show that functionalized nanoparticles, termed “Nanotraps,” completely inhibited SARS-CoV-2 infection by blocking the interaction between the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 and the ACE2 of host cells. The liposomal-based Nanotrap surfaces were functionalized with either recombinant ACE2 proteins or anti-SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies and phagocytosis-specific phosphatidylserines. The Nanotraps effectively captured SARS-CoV-2 and completely blocked SARS-CoV-2 infection to ACE2-expressing human cell lines and primary lung cells; the phosphatidylserine triggered subsequent phagocytosis of the virus-bound, biodegradable Nanotraps by macrophages, leading to the clearance of pseudotyped and authentic virus in vitro. Furthermore, the Nanotraps demonstrated an excellent biosafety profile in vitro and in vivo. Finally, the Nanotraps inhibited pseudotyped SARS-CoV-2 infection in live human lungs in an ex vivo lung perfusion system. In summary, Nanotraps represent a new nanomedicine for the inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Dr. Wu received his B.S. (1998) and M.S. (2000) in Chemical Engineering from the National Cheng-Kung University, Taiwan. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Texas A&M University in 2006, working on developing advanced microscopy techniques. (advisor: Prof. M. A. Bevan) From 2007 to 2011, he worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. (advisor: Prof. J. T. Groves) During the postdoctoral training, he focused on studying the properties of biological membrane. Between 2011 and 2013, Dr. Hung-Jen Wu was appointed as a Research Associate in the Nanomedicine Department at the Houston Methodist Research Institute, and was involved in developing diagnostic tools for infectious diseases. Dr. Wu joined Chemical Engineering department at Texas A&M University in 2013 and became an Associate Professor in 2020. Dr. Wu’s research primarily focuses on the development of biosensors and their applications in glycobiology and infectious diseases

The dynamic process of binding protein onto a biological membrane, driven by a series of binding domains, brings a protein to an active site for regulation of protein function. Because of the fluidic nature of the cell membranes, receptors on cell membranes can freely diffuse on the two-dimensional surface, eventually leading to multivalent interactions with proteins. Such two-dimensional motion assists weak-affinity ligands to participate in protein binding processes, even though the affinities of these ligands are almost undetectable in conventional assays. A new detection tool is urgently needed to discover those ligands to enhance the efficiency of the targeted drug delivery system. We have developed a nanocube sensor coupled with a computer simulation to quantitatively explore the multivalent protein binding. The nanocube sensor is surrounded by lipid bilayers that possess the same physical and chemical properties as cell membranes. This biomimetic surface then enables the label-free detection of protein bindings by observing the absorption spectra shift of localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) peak. This biosensor works with standard laboratory plate reader for high-throughput binding kinetic analysis. We have successfully discovered the intrinsic hetero-multivalent binding mechanism in biological membrane. Based on our new discovery of multivalency principle, a novel strategy of targeted drug delivery will be presented for combating drug-resistance pathogens.

Dr. Danling Wang is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at North Dakota State University. She is the principle investigator of NEWS (Nano-Electronic Wearable Sensors) lab. She earned dual Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from University of Washington and Optical Physics from Peking University. Her research focuses on investigation of nanomaterial based sensor devices for applications in explosive detector in industry and military, breath analyzer for early stage disease diagnosis. Since 2016, Dr. Wang and her team have published more than 15 peer-reviewed journal papers, more than 10 invited conference presentation. The research of breath acetone sensor has gained lots of attention and secured more than 200,000 grants within 4 years.

Acetone existing in human breath is an effective biomarker of diabetes, which can be used for the early diagnosis and daily monitoring of diabetes. Comparing to the conventional method of monitoring the blood glucose level in blood, detection of breath acetone provides a non-invasive, accurate, convenient, and inexpensive method of diabetes diagnosis and monitoring. Recently, we has developed a new breath acetone sensor based on a novel nanocomposite made by 1- dimensional nanorods, K2W7O22 (KWO) and 2-dimensional Ti3C2 MXene. The lowest detection limit of this sensor to breath acetone can be down to 0.2 parts-per-million (ppm) which is much less than 0.76 ppm, the key threshold to distinguish health person and high-risk of diabetes person. More importantly, the 1D/2D KWO/Ti3C2 nanocomposite based sensor shows excellent selectivity to acetone, great tolerance to water vapor, and can operate at room temperature. This success of this research offers a new sensing technology for disease early detection and health monitoring noninvasively

Dr Santos received his PhD in 2011 from the Danish Technical University with a European Honour. Then, he moved to Harvard University as a John A. Paulson Postdoctoral Fellow to undertake research on energy materials and method developments. He moved to Stanford University in 2013 as an assistant scientist to investigate novel functional devices. Dr Santos started his research group in 2015 at Queen’s University (QUB) in the UK as a full Lecturer. At QUB, he took a leading role on the research of two-dimensional materials and energy efficient processes with several high-impact contributions. Dr Santos is one of the recipients of the 2020 Charles Hatchett Award for his investigations on Nb-based catalysts. He moved in 2020 to The University of Edinburgh as a Reader in Theoretical and Computational Condensed Matter Physics. He is part of the Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics within the School of Physics and Astronomy. He is an EPSRC Fellow on 2D magnetic materials.  

Dr Santos received his PhD in 2011 from the Danish Technical University with a European Honour. Then, he moved to Harvard University as a John A. Paulson Postdoctoral Fellow to undertake research on energy materials and method developments. He moved to Stanford University in 2013 as an assistant scientist to investigate novel functional devices. Dr Santos started his research group in 2015 at Queen’s University (QUB) in the UK as a full Lecturer. At QUB, he took a leading role on the research of two-dimensional materials and energy efficient processes with several high-impact contributions. Dr Santos is one of the recipients of the 2020 Charles Hatchett Award for his investigations on Nb-based catalysts. He moved in 2020 to The University of Edinburgh as a Reader in Theoretical and Computational Condensed Matter Physics. He is part of the Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics within the School of Physics and Astronomy. He is an EPSRC Fellow on 2D magnetic materials.  

Dr. Jelliss obtained his BSc (Chemistry) and his PhD (Chemistry) from the University of Bristol. His PhD research was based on the synthesis, characterization, and reactions of gold carborane complexes. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at St Louis University, having joined the faculty in 2000. Although he maintains interests in organometallic chemistry, for the last decade he has carried out extensive research with reactive metal nanoparticles

Reactive metals include alkali and alkaline earth metals as well as certain late transition metals and p-block metals like zinc and aluminum, respectively. These metals, in their bulk form, are valued for their high energy content, but their energetic value can be further enhanced by reducing their structures to the nanoscale, which increases the ratio of surface atoms to those in the interior. However, a significant challenge encountered when synthesizing reactive metal nanoparticles is the passivation and stabilization of their surfaces without oxidizing metal atoms many layers down into the nanoparticle. Such oxidation can greatly reduce the energy value of the nanomaterial.

Using bottom-up approaches such as catalyzed decomposition of molecular precursors, or top-down methods such as electrical explosion of wires (EEW), we have demonstrated that reactive metal nanoparticles can by synthesized and capped without significant detrimental surface oxidation using organic agents such as epoxides and alkenes. We are able to carefully exploit the reactivity of the metal nanoparticle surfaces to polymerize these molecules and create a protective organic polymer cap.

With the advent of ‘shelf-stable’ nanoaluminum, an unexpected challenge has arisen; kinetic stability has been rendered sufficient to significantly hinder subsequent reaction with oxygen and/or water, which may be required for propellant, explosive, or other energy-release applications. Thus we have developed capping schemes incorporating environmentally-responsive organic materials, whose degradation can be triggered by specific stimuli, such as UV light or thermal activation. We have also investigated the use of hollow polymer capsules and metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) to entrap nascent aluminum nanoparticles resulting in novel energetic nanocomposite materials.

Dr. Olivier Félix completed in 1999 his PhD degree in Chemistry at Université Louis Pasteur (Strasbourg, France). After a post‐doctoral fellowship at University of Twente (Enschede, Netherlands), he has integrated in 2000 the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) as researcher in the team of Professor G. Decher at Institut Charles Sadron (Strasbourg, France). His research activities focus on the fabrication of multifunctional multimaterial coatings/films using the so‐called Layer‐by‐Layer (LbL) technique. Since 2010 he has developed a new research activity based on the assembly of hybrid nanostructured materials with exceptional mechanical properties and interesting optical properties. In the meantime, he has contributed to the development of a new and versatile method, grazing incidence spraying (GIS), for the controlled in-plane alignment of anisotropic objects at solid interfaces. The latter combined with the LbL‐assembly technique is used to prepare bio‐inspired nanocomposites with complex superstructures.

The remarkable properties of natural composite materials (e.g. plant cell wall, animal exoskeleton) have attracted a wealth of research to understand their structure-properties relations at all length scales and to design novel materials with superior performance. However, while nature masters the organization of anisotropic nano-objects like nanocelluloses into complex superstructures, the development of synthetic nanocomposite materials with complex and precisely controlled architectures (e.g. helical) has proven to be difficult due to the lack of suitable approaches for their preparation.

With respect to the preparation of multimaterial thin films with a high level of control over the spatial positioning of their constituents, Layer-by-Layer (LbL) assembly [1] has gained its merits as a simple and highly versatile nanofabrication method. While the sequence of components in layered multimaterial films can be very well controlled by LbL-assembly, tuning of the in-plane anisotropy has not yet been achieved. Recently, we have introduced a method called “Grazing Incidence Spraying” for the in-plane alignment of anisotropic nanoparticles (cellulose nanofibrils, metallic nanowires and nanorods, …) on large areas [2]. Its combination with the LbL-approach permits to extend it toward the preparation of complex (e.g. helical) multilayer films in which the composition and orientation can be controlled independently in each layer.

The talk will illustrate some of our recent results on the design of complex bio-inspired nanostructured materials combining hard anisotropic elements like cellulose nanofibrils with soft polymer building blocks. The preparation of such thin films will be presented and their optical and mechanical properties will be discussed as function of the film composition and geometry [3,4].

[1].      Decher, G. Science, 1997, 277, 1232-1237

[2].      Blell, R. et al. ACS Nano 2017, 11, 84−94.

[3].      Merindol, R. et al. ACS Nano, 2015, 9, 1127 – 1136.

[4].      Merindol, R. et al. ACS Nano 2020, 14, 16525–16534.

Dr. Y.L. Mo, F.ASCE, F.ACI, F.Humboldt, F.IAAM, is John and Rebecca Moores Professor at the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, University of Houston (UH), Houston, Texas. Dr. Mo’s technical interests are multi-resolution distributed analytical simulations, nano-scale material and large-scale infrastructure testing, and field investigations of the response of complex structures, on which he has more than 500 research publications, including 274 referred journal papers, many conference, keynote and prestige lectures, research reports, books and book chapters, magazine articles and earthquake field mission reports. In the past several years, Dr. Mo has focused on smart material research, especially application of carbon nanofiber material for sustainable resilience of civil infrastructure subjected to multi-hazards.

Multi-hazards such as natural hazards (floods, earthquakes, severe storms and wild land fires) or manmade disasters (nuclear disaster, oil spills and terrorist attacks) lead to substantial damage on critical civil infrastructures and communities and have social, economic and environmental consequences. The immediate impacts on multi-hazards include loss of human life and damage to infrastructures. Multi-hazard mitigation for civil infrastructures forms a vital input in disaster management, design of development strategies and emergency response forecasting. In this lecture we will present how to develop a robust and cost-effective real-time carbon nanofiber aggregate (CNFA) sensor system that can be embedded at civil infrastructures for damage detection during events such as earthquakes, nuclear disasters and missile attacks, and for water level monitoring in civil infrastructures during flooding. A real-time multi-hazard alert software system will also be developed to monitor the data generated by the CNFA sensors and produce proper alerts when hazardous events are detected. The CNFA acts as a strain sensor. The stresses in the critical regions of civil infrastructures due to natural or man-made hazards can be determined by taking into account the strains developed on the surface of the CNFA. This strain produces an equivalent stress in the CNFA that can be derived from its electrical resistance variation. The CNFA sensor system determines the stresses and strains in civil infrastructures and transmits the information to immediately provide real-time information to decision makers. We will also develop a predictive computational modeling platform, which incorporates various couplings between mechanical, electrical and thermal effects and provides accurate coupled response (e.g., displacement, stress, temperature, electrical field, impedance frequency) of civil infrastructures.

Dr. Liu obtained the BS (Physics) from Nanjing University, MS (Optics) from Chinese Academy of Science, and the PhD (Biological Engineering) from Purdue University. His PhD research was developing nonlinear microscopes for the label-free imaging of single molecules in the nanoscale. He has been focusing on the nanoscale light-matter interactions for decade. His current research focus is to develop scalable and modulated quantum photon sources for quantum communication and bioimaging.

Graphene is an extensively studied two-dimensional (2D) material and has earlier been used to tailor the emission behavior of proximal light emitters by controlling the energy flow to modulate the related relaxation rates, with demonstrated potential in fields of bio-sensing and photovoltaics. The good interface between emitters and the 2D materials are important to efficiently modulate the photon emission behavior.  However, seamless integration of the quantum light emitter and these atomically thin materials is challenging due to fabrication limitation. In this paper, we report the utilization of laser nanoshaping approaches to “wrap” the atomically thin graphene on the X-Y facets of the nanodiamond particles. Compared with the 2D layout, the 3D integration enhanced the energy transfer by 45%. Furthermore, we found that the energy transfer efficiency of NV centers to the 3D graphene could reach a maximum value of 80% over a long distance (~ 25 nm), under intense laser excitation. Our analysis indicates that the photon-generated carrier density of graphene enhances the non-radiative decay rate of NV centers. Besides contributing new insight on the fundamentals of interactions between graphene and quantum emitters, the effort undertaken furthermore holds tremendous promise in developing the graphene based nano-cavities for various applications ranging from sensing, to photovoltaics, to lasing, and to quantum communications

Dr. Haozhe Wang obtained his Bachelor's degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and his Ph.D. degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He is currently working as a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT. Dr. Wang's research is about nanoscale materials and their applications in advanced electronics. Dr. Wang has published various papers in prestigious journals such as Matter, Nature Communications, ACS Nano, etc. He is a recipient of the MIT Quantum Hackathon Creativity Award, the MIT Ho-Ching and Han-Ching Fund award.

Bilayer graphene is now a rising star for the discoveries of unconventional physics. While the number of exciting physical phenomena observed in bilayer graphene increases, a big gap persists in transforming these discoveries into useful applications, owing to the small-scale samples obtained via top-down approach. We realized a layer-by-layer (that is, Frank-van der Merwe) growth mode in large-scale bilayer graphene, with no island impurities, which is unprecedented in any van der Waals-stacked materials. This is important because it ensures the purity, quality and homogeneity of any thin films. Owing to counter-intuitive growth principle in chemical vapor deposition graphene, we proposed a new physical quantity, named "interface adhesive energy", that can be used to predict the growth mode. We show, through first-principle calculations, this new physical quantity is tunable. We have thus realized the classical Frank-van der Merwe growth mode in graphene.

The characterization of graphene is a historical problem. Since the first report of graphene, researchers have been showing a few characterization images and spectrum of a material, based on random sampling. The situation became ambiguous for large-scale sample, when massive data involved. We have invented a machine-learning-assisted Raman analysis tool for precise characterization of stacking order and layer number of our graphene grown in Frank van der Merwe mode.

Tanushree H. Choudhury received her Ph.D. in Materials Science from Materials Research Centre, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. In 2021 she joined the Department of Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay as an Assistant Professor. Prior to that she was in the 2D Crystal Consortium- Materials Innovation Platform at Pennsylvania State where she worked on wafer scale growth of epitaxial TMDs using metal organic chemical vapor deposition. Her research focuses on understanding fundamental mechanisms of crystal growth and epitaxy of TMDs and the effect of defects on nucleation of TMDs.

Monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) possess a range of intriguing optical and electronic properties including direct bandgap, high exciton binding energies, valley polarization. Our research is aimed at the development of an epitaxial growth technology for layered dichalcogenides, like that which exists for III-V and other compound semiconductors, based on metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). This approach provides a high overpressure of chalcogen species needed to maintain stable growth at elevated temperature and excellent control of the precursor partial pressures to achieve monolayer growth over large area wafers.

Our initial studies have focused on the epitaxial growth of binary TMD monolayers including MoS₂, WS₂, WSe₂ and MoSe₂ using metal hexacarbonyl and hydride chalcogen precursors to deposit on 2” sapphire substrates in a cold-wall CVD reactor.  Hydride chalcogens precursors allow for deposition of stoichiometric TMDs with a higher lateral growth rate. A multi-step precursor modulation growth method was developed to independently control nucleation density and the lateral growth rate of monolayer domains on the substrate. This approach also enables measurement of metal-species surface diffusivity and domain growth rate as a function of growth conditions providing insight into the fundamental mechanisms of monolayer growth. Using this approach, uniform, coalesced monolayer and few-layer TMD films were obtained on 2” sapphire substrates at growth rates on the order of ~1 monolayer/30 min. In-plane X-ray diffraction demonstrates that the films are epitaxially oriented with respect to the sapphire with narrow X-ray full-width-at-half-maximum indicating minimal rotational misorientation of domains within the basal plane. Controlling the growth temperature and chalcogen flux was crucial in establishing an epitaxial relation. Nuclei localization at the terrace edges, in addition to the underlying substrate, imposes a single orientation. Dark-field transmission electron microscopy of transferred WS₂ monolayers shows ~95% single orientation coverage with minimal bilayer and inversion domains. WS₂ single-crystal transferred films also show narrow exciton linewidths (~31 meV) and negligible defect-related emission at 80 K. The key features observed during the growth of WS_2, MoS₂ and WSe₂ will be discussed.

Dr. Marco Raabe obtained both his BSc (Biochemistry) and MSc (Biochemistry) from Ulm University. For his PhD (Chemistry) he moved to the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research. His PhD research was based on the functionalization and application of fluorescent nanodiamonds as imaging tools. During his postdoctoral research he worked on intracellular nanoscale sensing using nanodiamonds.  Recently, he was awarded with a postdoctoral fellowship of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). Furthermore, since December 2020 he is a member of the Humboldt Foundation. Currently, he is working at the Kyoto University in the group of Professor Itaru Hamachi as a JSPS&Humboldt Fellow. His area of interest is the engineering of the cell-surface to equip cells with new functions and to create living materials. He has published various papers in peer reviewed journals including Nano Letters, Small, Advanced Therapeutics, and ChemMedChem.

Nanodiamonds present an all-carbon-based nanomaterial with promising abilities in both bioimaging and nanoscale sensing. As nanodiamonds are naturally transparent without further optical properties, they owe their fluorescence to optical defect centers in the carbon lattice. For the most part, nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers have been studied previously, where their high photostability has enable the use of nanodiamonds as imaging probes for various techniques. Other than imaging, negatively charged NV centers (NV⁻) possess opto-magnetic properties which allow sensing of temperature, single spins, and pH with a high sensibility at the nanoscale. However, the chemically complex surface of nanodiamonds and their tendency to aggregate in physiological buffer solutions, has led to limited applications.

In this study, we lifted this hurdle by developing a new coating strategy which covers the surface of nanodiamonds and thus prevents aggregation. To this end, we absorbed hyperbranched polyethylenimine onto the nanodiamond surface and employed form-arm PEG chains as crosslinkers to form a nanogel shell. To endow these coated nanodiamonds with a heating function, we adsorbed the photothermal agent indocyanine green onto the nanogel. These nanodiamond−ICG constructs showed a photothermal effect after irradiation with an infrared laser. To explore this further, we proved that, after the construct was taken up by a human cervical carcinoma cell line (HeLa), we spatially induced cell death by applying the infrared laser. Most importantly, the nanodiamonds enabled us to sense the change of the intracellular temperature during the photothermal effect at the nanoscale and correlate this change to the macroscale temperature measurement. This gave us new insights into the local temperature and its influence on cell viability. Through this approach we can gain more details of temperature-driven biological processes at the nanoscale

Dr. Nikunjkumar R. Visaveliya studied Chemistry at Sardar Patel University in India. He obtained his doctoral degree from the Technical University of Ilmenau, Germany where he performed research on microfluidic syntheses of multifunctional polymer and composite nano/microparticles for sensing and labeling applications. Currently, he is a postdoctoral researcher at the City College of New York, USA. His research interests are microfluidics and interfacial/functional nanomaterials for biomedical, energy, catalysis, sensing, and labeling applications

Labeling through fluorescent materials are increasingly advantageous for in vivo and in vitro imaging applications for diagnostic and theranostic purposes. A wide range of various fluorescent organic dyes is routinely utilizing for various labeling purposes due to their easy use, low cost, and availability of full emission wavelength range. However, organic dyes are very sensitive to their surrounding in which they rapidly degrade either chemically or photochemically. To avoid the concern of degradability, inorganic nanoparticles (quantum dots) are highly versatile and photostable. However, quantum dots are relatively toxic to biological systems, and hence their widespread and safe uses are a concern. Alternatively, dye-doped polymer particles are promising for labeling and imaging due to their properties that overcome limitations of photodegradation as well as toxicity. In this work, various experimental strategies for the nanoscale and microscale fluorescent polymer particles have been developed to bind the fluorophores inside the matrix covalently or non-covalently, as well as at the surface through direct adsorption or based on bio-conjugation. On the other hand, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is one of the most powerful analytical techniques in which significant field enhancement can be realized upon adsorption of molecules (analytes) on the surface of metal nanostructure that allow detection (sensing) of analytes efficiently. A key element is SERS substrate that needs to be equipped with plenty of plasmonic hotspots with relatively roughened metallic surface. Despite many SERS substrates are routinely utilizing, there is still room and hence search is continuing for the dynamic substrates that reveal extraordinary SERS signal outcomes. Polymers can provide the platform to meet such requirements by systematically depositing metal nanostructures at the surface. Here, the development of the polymer-metal composite particles at nanometer and micrometer length scales, and their applications as sensor particles for SERS sensing are presented.

Dr. Leuenberger is a Professor of Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics in the NanoScience Technology Center, Dept. of Physics, and College of Optics and Photonics at the University of Central Florida working in the fields of quantum optics, 3D and 2D semiconductor heterostructures, graphene, 3D topological insulators, and magnetic systems. Besides his strong track record in quantum information science (Nature, PRL, PRB, Nano Lett, etc.), he gained broad expertise in developing multiscale models of photodetectors, transistors, LEDs, and thermal emitters made of 2D materials including defects (Nature Comm., Scientific Reports, PRB, etc.).

We present the model of an ultrasensitive mid-infrared (mid-IR) photodetector consisting of a hybrid heterostructure made of nanopatterned graphene (NPG) and vanadium dioxide (VO₂) which exhibits a large responsivity of R ~ 10⁵ V/W, a detectivity exceeding D* ~ 10¹⁰ Jones, and a sensitivity in terms of noise-equivalent power NEP ~ 10 fW/Hz^1/2 close to room temperature by taking advantage of the phase change of a thin VO₂ film. Our proposed photodetector can reach an absorption of nearly 100% in monolayer graphene due to localized surface plasmons (LSPs) around the patterned circular holes. The geometry of the nanopattern and an electrostatic gate potential can be used to tune the absorption peak in the mid-IR regime between 3 and 12 mm. After the photon absorption by the LSPs in the NPG sheet, the phase change of VO₂ from insulating to metallic phase is triggered, resulting in a current through the VO₂ sheet due to the applied bias voltage V_b. The response time is about 1 ms, shorter than the detection times of current VO₂ bolometers. Using a gradient thickness of the VO₂ layer, a linear dependence between input power P_inc of the incident light and the photocurrent I_ph is achieved. Our envisioned mid-IR photodetector reaches detectivities of cryogenically cooled HgCdTe photodetectors and sensitivities larger than VO₂ microbolometers while operating close to room temperature.