Assistant Professor, Chemistry Department

Steven Tait obtained a BS degree in Honors Physics and University Honors from Brigham Young University in 2000. He went on to graduate studies at the University of Washington, where his doctoral studies were co-supervised by Charlie Campbell in Chemistry and Sam Fain in Physics. A significant portion of his doctoral work was done in the laboratories of Bruce Kay at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in eastern Washington State through a graduate fellowship program in Nanoscience co-sponsored by UW and PNNL. His doctoral work explored the desorption kinetics of small alkanes from solid surfaces, methane dissociation on Pd nanoparticles and the growth and sintering kinetics of Pd nanoparticles on aluminum oxide. He completed his PhD in 2005 and moved to Stuttgart, Germany for postdoctoral work in the department of Prof. Klaus Kern at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research. There he studied the self-organization of supramolecular nanometer-scale structures at surfaces, especially systems formed by metal—organic coordination. Those studies were sponsored by fellowship awards from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Max Planck Society.

Prof. Tait’s current research focuses on functional nanometer-scale architectures at surfaces formed by self-assembly of organic building blocks. This research combines the understanding of growth kinetics and materials characterization of physical and analytical chemistry with the rich building block library and supramolecular organization schemes of organic and inorganic chemistry. Prof. Tait’s research group utilizes a variety of surface analysis methods to develop and characterize these systems. Efficient patterning of solid surfaces with organic materials is a challenging research problem that has the potential to open up new opportunities and new technologies in many fields, including molecular electronics, catalysis, molecular recognition/sensors and magnetism.

Research

The focus of our work is to explore functional nanometer-scale architectures at surfaces formed by self-assembly of organic building blocks. The research in our lab combines the understanding of growth kinetics and materials characterization of physical and analytical chemistry with the rich building block library and supramolecular organization schemes of organic and inorganic chemistry. Efficient patterning of solid surfaces with organic materials is a challenging research problem that has the potential to open up new opportunities and new technologies in many fields, including molecular electronics, catalysis, molecular recognition/sensors and magnetism.

Our experiments are made in extremely clean and well-controlled vacuum chambers. Starting with atomically clean and flat surfaces, we sublimate molecular "building blocks" onto the surfaces from heated crucibles. We can control the deposition rate and final concentration of each component on the surface as well as the surface temperature during and after deposition. Thermal energy from the surface allows for diffusive motion of the molecular components so that they can assemble themselves into highly ordered two-dimensional structures. An exciting aspect to surface-supported studies of these model architectures is their accessibility for direct structural and electronic characterization with single molecule resolution using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). Insight gained at the local level - a direct view into the molecular world - combined with integral techniques, such as photoelectron spectroscopy, expands our understanding of the fundamental interactions that determine the function of these systems.

In these highly controlled conditions we can directly observe interesting phenomena of the growth process, and characterize in a controlled way the functional aspects and chemical properties of the structures - and most importantly how we can tune those properties by selection of the organic components. In these model systems we can "tweak" the system in several directions - changing metal centers, organic ligand modification, surface interaction, growth conditions - and observe how the supramolecular networks respond structurally and with regard to function.

Our current projects are focusing on the construction of such supramolecular networks on technologically relevant surfaces. We are also examining more closely the chemical functionality of the systems and how this depends on the ligand structure and supramolecular interactions. This interdisciplinary research will lead to a better understanding of the properties of organic-based nanostructures and nanotechnologies, especially with regard to electronic characterization, thermodynamics of assembly, surface interactions, and device development in controlled environments.

Publications

S. L. Tait.
"Function Follows Form: Exploring 2D Supramolecular Assembly at Surfaces" (Perspective), ACS Nano, 2, 617-621 (2008).

S. L. Tait, G. Costantini, Y. Wang, N. Lin, A. Baraldi, F. Esch, L. Petaccia, S. Lizzit, K. Kern,
"Metal-Organic Coordination Interactions in Fe-Terephthalic Acid Networks on Cu(100)," Journal of the American Chemical Society , 130 , 2108 (2008).

A. Langner, S. L. Tait, N. Lin, C. Rajadurai, M. Ruben, and K. Kern,
"Self-Recognition and Self-Selection in Multicomponent Supramolecular Coordination Networks on Surfaces," Proc. of the National Acad. of Sciences USA , 104 , 17927 (2007).

S. L. Tait, Z. Dohnálek, C. T. Campbell, B. D. Kay,
"n-Alkanes on Pt(111) and C(0001) / Pt(111): Chain-length Scaling of Kinetic Desorption Parameters," Journal of Chemical Physics , 125 , 234308 (2006).

S. L. Tait, Z. Dohnálek, C. T. Campbell, B. D. Kay,
"n-Alkanes on MgO(100) II: Chain-length Dependence of Kinetic Desorption Parameters for Small n-Alkanes,"
Journal of Chemical Physics , 122 , 164708 (2005).

S. L. Tait, L. T. Ngo, Q. Yu, S. C. Fain, Jr., C. T. Campbell,
"Growth and Sintering of Pd Clusters on a -Al 2 O 3 (0001)," Journal of Chemical Physics 122 , 064712 (2005).

Awards

• Postdoctoral Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, Stuttgart, Germany, 2005-2008
• Henderson Prize for Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation, Department of Physics, University of Washington, 2006
• Research Fellowship Award, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, 2005-2007

Highlights

"Roll Call for Molecules," Max Planck Research, Issue 1, 2008.
Steven Tait and colleagues demonstrate that even very simple organic molecules can sort themselves out by size in mixtures at surfaces to produce nanometer-fine, well-ordered molecular lattices.