Bioengineering graduate student Fatemeh Ostadhossein's image, 2-D aquarium, was recently featured in Chemical & Engineering News. Ostadhossein works with HfS2, which has tunable conductivity, to determine if the material can serve as an alternative to highly conductive graphene in electronics, catalysis, and energy storage and conversion applications. For example, HfS2 nanosheets could provide a catalytic surface for solar water splitting that sustainably produces hydrogen fuel. She used chemical exfoliation and grinding to create sheets of HfS2 less than 100 nm thick, which she then dispersed in water and dried.
She captured this image with a scanning electron microscope and colorized it. Ostadhossein is a member of Bioengineering Associate Professor Dipanjan Pan's MatMed research group.