News

Government, industry, and scientists have taken notice of Mingdi Yan's research on nanoscale materials. Yan, an assistant professor of chemistry, already has a dozen patents and continues to generate interest and demand for her visionary research.

Since joining PSU in 1998, Yan has been busy developing a special surface chemistry that allows a thin layer of coating on materials such as silicon wafers or medical devices to change their surface properties. The coating, fabricated at the molecular level from organic and polymeric materials, is only a few nanometers thick (1/10,000th the diameter of a human hair). By selection, some coatings can provide a friendly chemical environment for biological substances like proteins or human cells that might otherwise reject the device.

While the patent is still pending on the unique method used to fabricate the technology, Yan is collaborating with Oregon Health & Science University and is in advanced stages of negotiation with a local venture capital firm to utilize the technology. Meanwhile, Yan is also working on a technology called molecular imprinting. Creating artificial antibodies or enzymes that recognize specific molecules, Yan's research group has developed a process to make these materials on silicon chips. These devices could find potential applications as biosensors to detect environmental pollutants such as chemical and biological warfare agents.