Veeco Instruments Inc., a provider of scanning probe microscopes (SPM) to the nanoscience community, recently announced the winners of the second phase of the Veeco Labs Research Grant Program, “Energy Innovation.” Veeco Labs is a competitive grant program that was created to facilitate collaboration between Veeco and the leading scientists in the SPM community. This phase of Veeco Labs solicited development and validation proposals for using an SPM to speed the characterization of, facilitate the development of, improve the yield/efficiency of or enhance the fundamental understanding of, energy generation (e.g., solar, thermovoltaics), storage (e.g., batteries, hydrogen) or conservation (e.g., LEDs, engineered materials). The proposals were reviewed by a panel of Veeco scientists based on a broad range of technical criteria. The winning recipients of Veeco’s Electronics Module Packages, which retail as high as $27,500 each, depending upon module type, represented three countries and a wide variety of applications: • Brooke Beam, University of Arizona, “Mapping the Interfacial Electrical Properties of Organic Photovoltaic Devices” • Qiao Chen, University of Sussex, “In-situ Mapping of Electronic Property of Active Anode for Water Splitting with C-AFM” • Rolf Crook, Simon Connell and Stephen Evans, University of Leeds, “Scanning Capacitance Microscopy/Photovoltaic Generation” • Palash Gangopadhyay, Jayan Thomas and Robert A. Norwood, University of Arizona, “Conducting AFM Modulator” • Gajendra Shekhawat, Northwestern University, “SPM-Based Nanopatterning of Piezoactuators and Nanorods for Photovoltaics” • Adam Stieg, University of California, Los Angeles, “Pyroelectricity for Energy Harvesting” • Christopher M. Yip and Timothy P. Bender, University of Toronto, “Combinatorial Microscopies for the Characterization of Photovoltaic Materials” Stephen Minne, senior director of applications development for Veeco’s AFM business, commented: "We thank all those who applied and are pleased to congratulate those who won this second phase of the Veeco Labs Research Grants. Energy research is an area of utmost importance in today’s world, and it is an area where electrical and mechanical nanotechnologies are proving to be integral in making the necessary advances. AFM’s role as an advanced microscopic technique will not only prove to be enabling in this field, but transformational. It is very rewarding for Veeco to be sponsoring this important research.” For more information, visit: www.veeco.com/veeco-labs