Thrust I: Functional Imaging

Hybrid functional materials, consisting of both inorganic and organic components, are considered a rich platforms for many applications in a wide variety of fields, ranging from optics and micro-electronics to energy materials for conversion and storage, transportation, and health science including diagnosis and regeneration. The material properties of hybrid materials can be controlled by modifying the composition on the molecular scale, resulting potentially in adaptive or “smart” materials. While molecular engineering and synthesis have emerged as cross-cutting approaches to tailor complex hybrid systems of various shapes, multi-length scale and correlative imaging, also known as functional imaging, will be needed to develop a fundamental understanding of the structure-property relationships in hybrid functional materials.

Due to the nature of these materials, which exhibit complexity scales ranging from pico- to micrometers (six orders of magnitude), there is not a single imaging approach that can provide the desired information at the necessary resolution. For example, transmission electron microscopy or scanning probe microscopies can provide information about the local atomic-, chemical- and electronic structures but only for highly crystalline materials that are insensitive to ionizing radiation. X-ray imaging, spectroscopy and diffraction provide information about large ensemble averages with significantly improved signal compared to electron microscopies. Meanwhile, optical approaches, including fluorescence (optical) microscopy or Raman spectroscopy can provide specific information about the presence of specific compounds or bonding states over large fields of view, but are often limited by the diffraction limit of optical systems.