Research from Latha Venaktaraman's group was recently published in the artcile, "Non-chemisorbed gold–sulfur binding prevails in self-assembled monolayers," in Nature Chemistry. Improved mechanistic understanding will help answer the question of how predominantly chemisorbed sulfur-gold SAMs can be reliably formed under ambient conditions, if at all. This will help focus efforts to identify new linker groups, and/or preparation methods, that facilitate the construction of more stable SAMs with increased electronic transparency and stability. The effect of surface pre-treatments on the molecule-substrate bonding of gold-thiol SAMs is likely also a rich area of further study/reinterpretation.

I. Cevdet Noyan, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and of Earth and Environmental Engineering and former Chair of the APAM Department, has won the 2019 Hanawalt Award from the International Centre for Diffraction Data (ICDD). He was selected for this honor for his many contributions to X-ray diffraction methods and for the depth and breadth of knowledge in combining materials science and diffraction characterization.