Research results to be published in the upcoming issue of Science, detail a collaborative effort involving The University of Scranton, a Jesuit university in Pennsylvania, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a research institution in Illinois.

"This is the first time that anyone has measured how a specific motion of a molecule on one side of a molecular wall causes molecules within the wall to move," said John Deak, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemistry at The University of Scranton. "In nanotechnology, researchers design materials whose properties originate in clusters of molecules on the nanometer level. This research can be used to help us better understand how molecules interact on these dimensions."

The faculty and students involved were Dr. Deak and his undergraduate student Timothy Sechler; and University of Illinois chemistry professor Dana Dlott, Ph.D., Yoonsoo Pang, graduate assistant, and Zhaohui Wang, post-doctoral research associate.

"The experiment detailed the pathways for energy transfer and also provided the tools to study other molecules," said Dr. Dlott. "In designing nanoscale devices, the shapes of the molecules must be designed not only to be small and fast, but also to move heat effectively. There is no reason that this technique is not applicable to just about any molecule."

Key to the discovery was the collaboration between the faculty members of both institutions of higher learning. A research concept developed at Scranton was put in practice using an advanced laser technology called IR Raman Spectroscopy at the University of Illinois. The laser measures the behavior of molecules in nanometer size spaces.

Included among the research scientist authors is
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23-Sep-2004