Category: 2021
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Filtered Fluorescence
Label Filtered Fluorescence Artist Alex Robb Description Photon upconversion is the process of converting low-energy photons into higher energy ones. This has proven to be useful in a wide variety of applications, but especially for solar energy conversion in which most of the low energy photons from the sun can not be absorbed effectively, thus…
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Third Islet From The Sun
Label Third Islet From The Sun Artist Wesley Eaton Description A redox-sensitive biosensor was virally delivered to an islet of Langerhans and selectively expressed in β-cells. Islets of Langerhans are endocrine cell clusters found in the pancreas, primarily made up of insulin producing β-cells. These cells are responsible for maintaining blood glucose levels in the…
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The Creation of Color
Label The Creation of Color Artist Carl Conti Description A molecular dye (left, red) and plasmonic nanorods (right, blue) come together to illustrate the different ways colors arise. The dye relies on the excitation of electrons from pi to pi* orbitals, while the nanorods exhibit their unique color due to the coupling of incoming light…
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Crystal Flowers
Label Crystal Flowers Artist Maya Chaabang Description The image shows the crystal growth of an organic salt, the product of a failed synthesis. The goal was to co-crystallize the organic salt with metal halides and study their photophysical properties. However, I ended up with these yellow emissive flower-like crystals of the organic salt alone. I…
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Playing Lego on an Atomic Scale
Label Playing Lego on an Atomic Scale Artist Wenkai Zheng Description Placing a bulk crystal onto a sticky tape, folding and peeling the tape several times can create progressively thinner layers, eventually leading to a single-layer material, so-called 2D crystals. If one considers the 2D crystals to be analogous to Lego blocks, those isolated atomic-scale…
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Through the Rainbow
Label Through the Rainbow Artist Alexander Bieber Description The image contains various solutions of semiconductor nanocrystals or aromatic dye molecules that were excited with a blue laser. Understanding light-matter interactions will help push solar cells, lighting, and other semiconductor technologies towards their maximum efficiencies. Type Cell Phone Camera Artist Affiliation Graduate Student Department Chemistry and…
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Garnet and Gold
Label Garnet and Gold Artist Zach VanOrman Description Each vial in the image contains differently sized quantum dots (QDs), which are fluorescent under ultraviolet excitation. The redder QDs are larger, causing their band gap to be smaller, and emit lower energy light (red vs. yellow). QDs can be used in displays, or in our case,…
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Snow Globe
Label Snow Globe Artist Noelle Watson Description Pictured is a cuvette containing zirconium oxide (ZrO2) suspended in acetonitrile. In the Hanson lab, nanocrystalline ZrO2 is used as a substrate for the construction of surface-bound molecular assemblies. The unique properties of ZrO2 allow us to investigate the surface chemistry of these assemblies using spectroscopic methods. Type…
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Glowing Invaders
Label Glowing Invaders Artist Jane Benoit Description This image depicts human HEK293 cells, which express the SARS-CoV-2 protein ORF7A and which have been tagged with green fluorescent protein (GFP). This tag allows us to visualize where the protein is in a given cell and allows us to assess which cells produce the protein. DAPI was…
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The Many Faces of Zinc Oxide
Label The Many Faces of Zinc Oxide Artist Raul Ortega Description This work depicts the photoluminescence of zinc oxide nanocrystals. Different emission colors can be achieved through multiple structural manipulations of these nanocrystals. In this work, green is chromium (III) doped zinc oxide, yellow is quantum confined zinc oxide, and red is europium (III) doped…