Published on Monday February 6, 2012
A micrograph by materials Ph.D. students Babak Anasori and
Michael Naguib (advisor: Michel Barsoum) and Professors Yury
Gogotsi and Michel Barsoum has won the "People's Choice" award in
the Science Magazine and National Science
Foundation 2011 International Science & Engineering
Visualization Challenge. The image received the most
votes from the general public to garner the honor.
The picture, entitled "The Cliff of the Two-Dimensional World,"
resembles a red-rock bluff and depicts ultrathin layers of
titanium-based compounds as viewed under an electron
microscope. The image is the first to be captured of these
materials, discovered at Drexel, in 2D. The layers depicted
in the image, which the researchers have named MXenes, are thin
enough to be considered two-dimensional. MXenes can be used
to produce energy storage devices, sensors, and solar cells, among
other applications. This research was featured as the cover
article in the October 4, 2011 (Volume 23, Issue 37) issue of Advanced Materials.
News about the awards has appeared in National Geographic, BBC, MSNBC, and Wired.
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