My research will be using in situ microscopy methods to model growth and hierarchical assembly of hybrid organic / inorganic structures. I’ll be using a liquid cell transmission electron microscope holder and in situ atomic force microscopy to characterize systems as they assemble. The systems of interest will be composed of peptide arrays functionalized with solid binding peptides which facilitate biomineralization. It will be interesting to see if manipulating the spacing of solid binding peptides will favor different phases of inorganic materials to nucleate. It will also be interesting to characterize the thickness of inorganic phase grown when the solid binding peptide is constrained to a 2D array. In situ microscopy generates a very large data set and knowledge about machine learning will be beneficial towards analyzing this data.
Advisor: James De Yoreo – Molecular Engineering