Ken Carter

Current Research
Over the years, there has been a steady increase in number of techniques and "tools" that are available to the polymer chemist that have allowed us to continue to gain a better understanding of complex systems and to "build" polymers with functionality and properties that were not thought possible even 5 years ago. Our research group is concerned with new materials and processes that can be used to understand and control specific material properties as they relate to nanotechnology, data storage, microelectronic fabrication and biotechnology. One aspect of the research program involves the chemical modification of surfaces to allow the controlled growth of polymers from the surface. We hope to be able to gain a high degree of control of the surface properties through such controlled modification. Structure development through self-organization plays a key role in our processes and materials design. Understanding the complex interfaces of our materials is key to controlling and tuning their properties. A major thrust of the work involves controlled patterning of nanoscopic features onto appropriate substrates via novel contact patterning techniques. Coupling our advanced patterning techniques with specially designed functional polymeric resins have given us the ability to control the size, shape and chemistry of nanoscopic patterns. This is opening up completely new avenues towards the fabrication and design of microelectronic devices that operate on the molecular scale. The ability to harness this control of feature size and surface chemistry also has obvious implications for data storage (magnetic and cross point) and biotechnology (sensors and arrays).

Learn more at www.pse.umass.edu/carter/people/carter.html

Academic Background

• BS Chemistry, State University of New York - Oneonta, 1985
• PhD Chemistry, University of Vermont, 1991