My summer project is to work on the individual release of mucoadhesive patches. Currently, injection of the peptides is the most effective method to deliver proteins. Mucoadhesive patches are intestinal patches that was developed to orally delivery peptides. Oral delivery is noninvasive and patient friendly compared to injection. There are 2 main barriers that make the oral delivery of peptides difficult. One being the presence of acid and enzymes in the stomach that readily degrade the proteins. When proteins lose their structure, they lose their function. Even if the proteins safely get to the small intestine, where nutrients are absorbed, the protein molecules are too big to pass through the intestinal wall. The mucoadhesive patch is made to adhere to the intestinal wall and force the small intestine to absorb all the drug that is loaded on the patch. These patches will be delivered to the small intestine using a enteric-coated gelatin capsule. Enteric coating protects the capsules from degrading in acid in the stomach, but later dissolves in a neutral pH in the small intestine releasing the patches.

The problem with mucoadhesive patches are that they become very adhesive when they are introduced to mucous. When the capsules start degrading, water leaks in. As a result, the patches stick to each other before they are released into the intestine. My project is to figure out a way to get these patches to have them released from the capsules individually.

I always thought research was an area for “smart” people. After participating in research for almost one year and a half, I came to realize that anyone can participate in research as long as they have a commitment and passion for science. Participating in research early in my undergraduate career is one of the best decisions I have made.

Oftentimes when people hear about nuclear energy, they would associate it with nuclear weapons. However, that is often a misconception that the public has. Nuclear reactors DO NOT BLOW UP and cause a mushroom-like cloud (that would be a bomb). Nuclear energy is actually a source of energy that is cheap and abundant.

Currently, nuclear power plants around the globe utilize nuclear fission, splitting of an atom in order to generate energy. However, storage and maintenance of its fuel can be costly. Thus research projects in nuclear energy now focus on nuclear fusion, the combination of two atoms in order to obtain energy. My research this summer focuses on nuclear fusion.

The objective of my research project is to develop an alloy that can withstand the high temperature operated inside of a nuclear fusion reactor. This alloy is called nanostructured ferritic alloy (NFA) – a term coined by my own faculty mentor, Professor G.R. Odette. My job this summer is to investigate the affect of Scandium in NFA when heat treated and see whether this combination would yield ideal results in terms of irradiation healing, prevention of material swelling, and material strengthening.

Because I want to learn as much as possible from my lab, I would assist my mentor in analyzing his research specimens. I learned how to do micro-hardness testing and to utilize advanced sample preparation techniques. I am really thankful to be part of this research program because the work and concepts that go around in my lab are truly amazing and aspiring.

Hi everyone,

My name is Mary Lou Bailey and this is my second summer doing research in physics! I am excited to tell you all about how much fun working in a lab can be. Of course working here, in physics faculty Dr. Mark Sherwin’s lab, requires a lot of hard work and dedication – but that is for another blog post!

My first few weeks working here under the UCLEADS program have been a blast. I started off continuing a project I had been working on over the past academic year. With more time in the summer to really focus on this project, I managed to finish it within the first two weeks of this internship! The majority of this project focused on building different parts for a mechanical line that moves a cart across our optics table, using stepper motors. In order to build these parts, I got to spend a lot of time in the physics machine shop. Let me tell you about the machine shop – it is a blast in there. The student supervisor, Guy, is a lot of fun to work with and be around. Whenever I go up to him with a question about one of the machines, before I can get one word out, he’ll look at me and jokingly say, “alright, what did you break this time?’ In case you were wondering, I haven’t broken anything… yet. Another great thing about the machine shop is the music they play in there. Yeah, the music. In my opinion, they play really interesting heavy rock/borderline metal music (?. I’m pretty mainstream when it comes to music so almost anything outside of Ryan Seacrest’s America’s Top 40 is pretty new to me). Anyway, I think this genre of music really sets the stage for a machine shop.

The machine shop is split into two parts – the student half and the high energy half. Only authorized personnel are allowed in the latter half, which brings me to my next story! One of the pieces for this mechanical line I worked on required an aluminum plate with 55 1/4-20 (screw size) tapped holes. Now, in the student shop, you would tap these holes one by one by hand. It is a very tedious task when you have to do more than 5 holes. So you can imagine my feelings towards doing 11 times that. I began on this task, twisting, untwisting, and pouring some “magic tap” fluid into these holes to help the tap pieces thread smoother. After about 2 holes, Guy came up to me and nonchalantly asked, “want to use a big-boy toy?” I immediately said yes. I followed him into the high energy shop, where many serious faces turned to look at the small but brave girl walk past them. Guy took me to a very cool looking air drill, where he attached my tap screw and turned it on. I quickly tapped through each hole, using this powerful, handy, and convenient drill. Within 5 minutes, a task that was guaranteed to take 2 hours was finished. I blew off the drill, took my tap screw and aluminum plate, and strutted out of there like a pro machinist. All in a day’s work.

And that’s some of what goes on in the physics machine shop! Tune in next week to find out the inside scoop on Free Electron Lasers!

Hi everybody,

This lab has me doing a lot of things. Every day, there is a changeup. One day, I am taking measurements, the next day I learning about lab experiments, the following day I am work that requires some elbow greasin’, and then back to reading . . .

I’m a physics undergrad from UC Berkeley and I will be entering my final semester this coming fall. I work for Borzoyeh Shojaei in Chris Palmstrøm’s lab in the Materials Department and this is my fourth lab. I work in the same group as Vishaal Varahamurthy (see his post) and Ashton Meginnis, though our projects are different.

My project focuses on semiconductor growth. We study the growth of group III-V heterostructures, which are layered semiconductors made of more than one material from the boron group and the nitrogen group (such as indium arsenide, InAs). Each material has its own electronic band structure and varying the material of each layer provides different electronic properties. Simply put, this is a lot like making a sandwich. Each ingredient is layered and this serves as a way to bring out the best flavors. Interestingly enough in heterostructures, there are ways to see how well our materials are grown, just like the way we can tell how delicious a sandwich is.

We grow our semiconductors by molecular beam epitaxy, which shoots heated atoms to the heterostructure layer-by-layer. We control the amount of atoms by using shutters, just like the shutters of a window can block light. After we grow the heterostructure, we measure lots of electrical properties – such as electron mobility – through the Hall effect (watch this video to see what the Hall effect is). As the name electron mobility may suggest, we want this value to be high just like the way we want our sandwiches to taste good!

Molecular Beam Epitaxy: Semiconductors Are Made Here!

We connect it to the Hall effect apparatus, which applies different voltages, current, and magnetic field values to get the semiconductor’s stats, such as mobility (measured in cm²/(V·s)), the carrier density (1/cm²), sheet resistivity (Ω/square or ohms per aspect ratio), and the Hall coefficient (cm²/C). In order to make our numbers better, we need to accept the fact that our materials contain defects. It would be extremely difficult to make a perfect, defect-free semiconductor, so the science here is to understand these defects and which what my project is.

Hall Effect Apparatus

Although most of these defects lay in between materials, we can still see them under a microscope since the layer thickness ranges around a few hundred microns. I do this by Nomarski microscopy, an optical microscopy technique that reveals any slight deviation of time (called a phase difference) that it takes for a photon to travel from the material to the lenses. After adjusting Nomarski imaging settings, I note what I see on the surface and where it is. Although as much as I want for these defects not to exist, some of these are quite pretty.

GaAs Sample “Bo309”

This material is a gallium arsenide sample that Borzoyeh grew. The defects did hinder the measured mobility of 6900 cm²/(V·s), though not drastically. Compare this value to the typical value of 7900 cm²/(V·s) for GaAs at room temperature. Later in the summer, I’ll be working with atomic force microscopy (AFM), which will allow us to look at our samples at an even greater detail. Future measurements will also involve lowering the temperature of the material to see how well does the semiconductor really perform. And future results will give us answers to making the better semiconductor.

Hello! My name is Christopher Siefe and I am going into my second year at UCSB now as a Chemical Engineering major, having just switched from Chemistry. Currently, I am working as a part of the Moskovits Research Group in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. With my mentor, Jose Navarrete, we are trying to discover more about the fundamental science behind surface plasmons, electron oscillations that occur in metal due to light. We are currently building a device that incorporates nanowires into a field effect transistor so that we can analyze this phenomenon. I have now been participating in the UC LEADS program for a couple of weeks. My first impression of undergraduate research? I love it!

Research is very new to me, so I have been adapting to the research environment while simultaneously diving into a load of advanced material. Many of the topics overwhelmed me at first but already many of those same topics seem to make more sense. During my very first week, my mentor and I grew tin (II) oxide nanowires using chemical vapor deposition. I had read about this process and how it works but it was designing and running the process that helped me truly understand the nanowire growth. Now I feel really comfortable with this subject, although there is always much more to comprehend, I feel confident in this aspect of my project. So bring on those questions!

More than anything, I cannot describe the feeling inside me when we had grown nanowires on our substrate. It was incredible! I could not believe that we had created something so tiny and complex, just like that! And then to be able to see scanning electron microscope (SEM) images of the nanowires that we grew! It was intense. Additionally, I have been lucky enough to go into the UCSB Cleanroom, full suit and all! Though I cannot use any of the instruments myself (completely understandable, I would prefer not to spend thousands of dollars if something were to break), simply being able to go into the cleanroom and hear about the instruments and processes there; it is truly an amazing experience. Several times during these past few weeks I have had to stop myself from screaming with joy because this is such awesome science.

This is a great learning experience for me. Specifically since this is a remarkably different type of learning. Although I love taking classes on subjects and find this style of education very useful, I am not as familiar with learning in a research setting. Let me emphasize this fact: learning in a research environment is drastically different. The phrase “there is no answer in the back of the book” could not be more accurate. Some people may find this frustrating but to me this is exciting! I am learning in an entirely different way, using parts of my brain that I normally never have the opportunity to use. It is a nice change and a fantastic challenge. Besides learning about new subjects like surface plasmons, nanomaterials, field effect transistors, and more, I am learning a whole new way of learning. It is amazing.

To anyone who is considering or unsure if they should try undergraduate research, do it! It is such a great opportunity to appreciate current science! And this is real science! Besides the learning and experience of it, it is unbelievable to think that our work might contribute to something larger someday. I am so fortunate to be a part of the Moskovits Lab, everyone has been great to work with and very helpful. I still have quite a lot to learn but I could not be more excited! Thank you to everyone who has helped me to get here!