My research spans both biophysics and material science. So far I have co-authored three scientific research papers, listed below.
Stabilizing Metal Halide Perovskite Films via Chemical Vapor Deposition and Cryogenic Electron Beam Patterning
Halide perovskites are promising semiconductor materials with potential applications in a wide range of technologies. This work investigates how electron beam treatment under cryogenic conditions affects chemical vapor deposition-grown perovskite films.
The study found that an optimal electron beam dosage could significantly shift and enhance the photoluminescence of methylammonium lead iodide films while also increasing their photocurrent. The effects differed for chlorine-incorporated and two-dimensional perovskite films. Monte Carlo simulations were used to investigate differences in electron beam interactions with different perovskites.
My contribution: I performed Monte Carlo simulations of electron beam interactions with the substrate.
Read the paper →Ion Beam Mixing Effects in Focused Ion Beam Time-of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry
Time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) is a highly precise technique for measuring the elemental composition of materials. Combining it with a focused ion beam provides the additional advantage of high spatial resolution, making the technique useful for studying materials ranging from batteries to biomaterials.
This work investigates an important limitation of the technique: the ion beam can itself alter the sample being measured. Experiments on metallic bilayer thin films show that ion beam-induced mixing systematically correlates with the heat of mixing of the corresponding binary alloys. The results indicate that minimizing these interactions are important for achieving the highest possible spatial resolution.
My contribution: I collected time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry data for the study.
Read the paper →PS Poly: A Chain Tracing Algorithm to Determine Persistence Length and Categorize Complex Polymers by Shape
Polymers such as proteins and nucleic acids can take on many different shapes and mechanical properties. Two important characteristics are their persistence length, which describes how resistant a polymer is to bending, and the topology of their molecular backbone.
PS Poly is a near-fully automated algorithm designed to extract these properties from images of individual polymers obtained using atomic force microscopy. The method uses image skeletonization, endpoint detection, and branch point detection to rapidly analyze thousands of polymers with subpixel precision. The algorithm was validated using DNA and demonstrated on candidalysin, a complex peptide toxin produced by Candida albicans.
My contribution: I worked on a Python implementation of the PS Poly program.
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