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Chihyu Chen ’09 (Bangkok, Thailand) is working with complex nanoscience this summer to understand the behavior of matter involving the concepts of dimensionality and competition. He is studying the interaction between the gas, xenon, and platinum.
Chen is collaborating with Anthony Novaco, Metzgar Professor of Physics, through Lafayette’s distinctive EXCEL Scholars program, in which students conduct research with faculty while earning a stipend. The program has helped to make Lafayette a national leader in undergraduate research. Many of the more than 160 students who participate each year share their work through articles in academic journals and/or conference presentations.
Interested in the theory of condensed matter – the study of the liquid and solid phases of materials – Novaco has received research grants from the National Science Foundation, Petroleum Research Fund, and Research Corporation. He has mentored Lafayette students in honors thesis and EXCEL Scholars research on computer simulations of monolayer melting, adsorption of quantum solids, and deterministic chaos. He has served as head of the physics department and is a past recipient of the Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Award and Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Faculty Lecture Award.
Pursuing B.S. degrees in physics and mechanical engineering, Chen explains that the project is not only an experiment in the simplest human interests, but also a theoretical one.
“We want to understand some specific behavior of a monolayer metallic molecule system,” he says. “Monolayer means that we’re looking at a ‘sheet’ compiled by individual atoms laid out next to each other.”
Though the experimentation is complex, the researchers’ goal is simple.
“We are attempting to understand the effects of temperature and density on the structure of a monolayer of a gas, xenon, on a solid surface, platinum,” Novaco says. “The behavior of xenon on such a surface runs the gamut from a nearly ideal gas to a highly structured solid as you vary the temperature and density of the system. Our main concern is the effects of the competition between the interaction of the xenon atoms with other xenon atoms versus the interaction of the xenon atoms with the platinum surface.”
Chen is using molecular dynamics to investigate this system. In molecular dynamics, computer simulation employs classical equations of motion (Newton’s Laws) to follow the motions of xenon atoms and determine the dynamics of the system. It then uses standard statistical mechanics to relate the motions to thermodynamic experimental measurements.
“On a theoretical basis, our understanding of the basic principles that explain the behavior of matter involve the notion of dimensionality and competition,” Novaco says. “This is a system for which both effects are important. It also involves the competition between order and chaos in nature.”
While the results of the project may appeal more to those who are versed in molecular dynamics, Chen says it is applicable to everyday life.
“This project may be interesting to a non-specialist in that it’s part of the noble human activity to understand more about nature,” he says.
As a national leader in undergraduate research, Lafayette sends one of the largest contingents to the National Conference on Undergraduate Research each year. Forty students were accepted to present their research at this year’s conference.