Ilona Kretzschmar
Associate Professor
Chemical Engineering

Office Location: Steinman Hall, T-315
Phone: 212-650-6769
Fax: 212-650-6660
E-mail: kretzschmar@ccny.cuny.edu
Website: http://www-che.engr.ccny.cuny.edu/ilona/public
Education:

Diploma (Chemistry), 1996, Technical University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Ph.D. (Chemistry) 1999, Technical University of Berlin, Berlin Germany
Fedeor-Lynen Fellow (Chemistry), 2000-01, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Postdoctoral Associate (Electrical Engineering) 2002-04, Yale University, New Haven, CT

Areas of Expertise:
molecular and nanoparticle self assembly, chemical and material modification of nanoparticle surfaces, two- and three-dimensional nanoparticle assembly, vacuum technology, surface and material science
Current Research Interests:
The desire for smaller, faster, lighter, and also flexible electronics will pose a problem for silicon-based technology in the near future. It is not the device size per se that is at the core of this problem. Functional transistors with a gate length of 6 nm have recently been reported by IBM. However, it is the planarity of silicon-based architecture and the necessity of interconnects that limit the number of devices per volume as well as the flexibility of modern electronics. First attempts at “three-dimensional” silicon-based structures (note this is strictly speaking not really a three-dimensional technology) have been made with the semiconductor-on-insulator (SOI) technology, but high defect concentrations in the thin silicon films due to lattice mismatches are hampering the feasibility of this approach at the very small scale. Furthermore, mass production and power dissipation present monumental tasks in Si-based technology at the nanometer length scale. It is obvious, that within the next 10 to 20 years, a new technology will be developed. It will be non-planar, allow a simple approach to power dissipation, and can be interfaced with the silicon industry, but will not depend on single-crystal silicon.

My research approaches this task by studying the directed self-assembly of modified nanoscopic particles. This research combines three areas; (1) self-assembly, (2) nanoscopic building blocks, and (3) molecule-material interactions. Self-assembly is economically interesting because it is highly parallel, easy to do, and can also be environmentally compatible. Nanoscopic building blocks are ideal for the new technology, because they can be synthesized in many different shapes, from a large variety of materials (metallic, semiconducting, and insulating) and they have nanometer dimensions. Molecule-material interactions govern the growth of nanoparticles, their interactions with each other and with other materials, and their self-assembly. Excellent control of these interactions will be the tool to obtain diverse three-dimensional structures and devices. For example, interconnects, diodes, transistors, and sensors, are just a couple of possible device structures that one can imagine to assembled with directed self-assembly.

Selected Recent Publications:
1)“Patchy Particles by Glancing Angle Deposition” A. A. B. Pawar, I. Kretzschmar* Langmuir, 2008, 24 355-358. PDF
2) “Self-assembly of T Structures in Molecular Fluids” A. B. Pawar, I. Kretzschmar*, G. Aranovich, M. D. Donohue J. Phys. Chem., 2007, 111, 2081-2089. PDF
3) “Surface-anisotropic Polystyrene Spheres by Electroless Deposition” J.-Q. Cui and I. Kretzschmar* Langmuir, 2006, 22 8281-8284. PDF
4) “Two-dimensional Micro- and Nanoparticle Monolayer Films” C. A. Silvera Batista and I. Kretzschmar* Proceedings of the Junior Scientist Conference '06, 2006.
5) “Electropolymerization on Microelectrodes: Functionalization Technique for Selective Protein and DNA Conjugation” E. Stern, S. Jay, J. Bertram, B. Boese, I. Kretzschmar, D. Turner-Evans, C. Dietz, A. Flyer, P. Wyrembak, E. Menhaji, D. LaVan, T. Malinski, T. Fahmy, M. A. Reed Anal. Chem., 2006, 78 6340-6346. PDF
6) “Gas-phase Thermochemictry of early cationic transition-metal sulfides of the second row: YS⁺, ZrS⁺, and NbS⁺” I. Kretzschmar, D. Schröder, H. Schwarz, P. B. Armentrout Int. J. Mass Spectrometry, 2006, 249-250 263-278. PDF
7) “Electrical Characterization of Single GaN Nanowires” E. Stern, G. Cheng, E. Cimpoiasu, R. Klie, S. Guthrie, J. Klemic, I. Kretzschmar, E. Steinlauf, D. Turner-Evans, E. Broomfield, J. Hyland, R. Koudelka, T. Boone, M. Young, A. Sanders, R. Munden, T. Lee, D. Routenberg, and M. A. Reed Nanotechnology, 2005, 16, 2941-2953. PDF
8) “Inelastic Electron Tunneling Spectroscopy of an Alkanedithiol Self-Assembled Monolayer” W. Wang, T. Lee, I. Kretzschmar, M. A. Reed Nano Letters, 2004, 4, 643-646. PDF
9) “Self-Assembly of Two- and Three-Dimensional Nanostructures for Electronic Applications” I. Kretzschmar and M. A. Reed In: Encyclopedia of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Eds. Schwarz, J. A.; Contescu, C.; Putyera K., Marcel Dekker, Inc., New York, 2004, pgs 3513-3525.