Symposium CH03-Frontiers in Scanning Probe Microscopy—Beyond Imaging of Soft Materials

Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM) is one of the major tools responsible for the emergence of novel soft functional materials and the characterization of their physical properties at the nanoscale. For the last years, we have witnessed a further proliferation of SPM in many areas of research: SPM helps to solve various materials challenges in the fields of energy harvesting, organic electronics, biosensors, self-assembly, biotechnology, life sciences, and medical applications. The number of advanced SPM techniques that become commercially available these days keeps growing extremely fast. Many recent results are exciting and generally accepted but some are treated as controversial yet. The amount of collected observables is also increasing and machine learning processes (such as data clustering or Artificial Intelligence) are now mature to analyze the data ideally user-independent.

The main objective of the symposium is to offer an international forum to share research with worldwide leading scientists active in the field of scanning probe microscopy on soft and polymeric (bio)materials, as well as with industrial colleagues to discuss the potential of novel SPM techniques and to promote and discuss existing SPM methods applied to solve new problems. To attain this objective, a broad discussion of experts in different areas of material sciences and engineering, biophysics, condensed matter, and instrumentation development is needed. It is expected that the interdisciplinary nature of this symposium will attract strong participation from both academia and industry in the multidisciplinary environment of MRS meetings.

The series of symposiums on SPM techniques organized within the framework of the MRS over the last decade has been extremely successful in bringing together international leaders in both academia and industry and attracting the great interest of young researchers and students.

Topics will include:

Nano-mechanical properties of soft materials (acquisition and analysis)
Modelling of the tip/sample interactions
Force measurements at surface/interface
Novel SPM designs and new measurement methods
Mapping at the nanoscale of the mechanical (and viscoelastic) properties of materials (polymer blends, nanocomposites, hydrogels, biopolymers, …) cells and viruses
Mechanical manipulation of single molecules
Novel methodologies for the acquisition of the observables
Novel methodologies/processes for the data analysis including advanced statistics and machine learning
Nanodielectrics
Piezoelectric and flexoelectric organic based materials (polymers, composites)
High speed and high-resolution SPM
Combined multimodal SPM (Raman, IR, …)
Towards industrial, biological, and medical applications

Invited Speakers:

Wojciech Chrzanowski (University of Sidney, Australia)
Liam Collins (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA)
Sonia Contera (Oxford University, United Kingdom)
Greg Haugstad (University of Minnesotta, USA)
Jason Killgore (National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA)
Malgorzata Lekka (Institute of Nuclear Physics Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland)
Takaharu Okajima (Hokkaido University, Japan)
Bede Pittenger (Bruker Corporation, USA)
Roger Proksch (Oxford Instruments, USA)
Franceso Simone Ruggeri (Wageningen University & Research, Netherlands)
Xiaoji Xu (Lehigh University, USA)