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Dr. Richard Siegel
Robert W. Hunt Professor, Materials Science & Engineering
Rensselaer Nanotechnology Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Talk Title: Manufacturing Nanoparticles for Applications in Society

Abstract
The past decade has seen an explosive growth worldwide in the physical, chemical, and biological synthesis and study of a wide range of nanoscale building blocks with unique properties in laboratory settings. However, before these nanoscale building blocks can significantly impact society through a wide range of novel applications, the manufacture of them needs to be scaled up to commercially viable quantities at an affordable cost.  This talk will describe how one such type of nanoscale building blocks, nanoparticles, has moved from the laboratory to the marketplace, and milligrams to tons, over the past 17 years.  We began making metal oxide nanoparticles via a gas-condensation physical process at Argonne National Laboratory in 1985 and in 1989 founded a company, Nanophase Technologies Corporation, to scale up production and eventually market products.  Since that time, a publicly held (since 1997) business has been developed that produces commercial quantities of a variety of nanoparticles and dispersions that have found applications that benefit society in sunscreens and other health care products, polishing media for microelectronics, and nanoscale fillers for a number of plastics, among others. Nevertheless, fundamental research continues with these commercially available nanoparticles that could expand the horizons of their application space in society.  Some examples from this research in our own laboratories in the National Science Foundation funded Center for Directed Assembly of Nanostructures at Rensselaer to create materials that possess enhanced mechanical, electrical, optical, and bioactive properties, and multifunctional combinations thereof, will also be presented.

Biographical Sketch
Dr. Siegel is the Robert W. Hunt Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and founding Director of the Nanotechnology Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is also founding Director of the National Science Foundation Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center for Directed Assembly of Nanostructures. 

He was graduated from Williams College in 1958 with an AB degree in physics and received an MS degree in physics in 1960 and a PhD degree in metallurgy in 1965 from the University of Illinois in Urbana. After two years of post-doctoral materials research at Cornell University, Dr. Siegel served from 1966 to 1976 on the faculty of the State University of New York at Stony Brook in the Department of Materials Science. He was a research scientist in the Materials Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory from 1974 to 1995, serving for most of that time as group leader in the areas of metal physics and defects in metals and as a research program manager. 
     
Dr. Siegel has been a visiting professor in Germany, Israel, India, Switzerland and Japan and has been active in local, national, and international professional organizations. He is currently a member of the Nanotechnology Technical Advisory Group of the US President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Dr. Siegel chaired the World Technology Evaluation Center worldwide study on nanostructure science and technology during 1996-98 that led to the US National Nanotechnology Initiative in 2001. He was also past chairman (1992-96) of the International Committee on Nanostructured Materials. 

Dr. Siegel has authored more than 240 publications and several patents (10 issued, 8 pending) in the areas of defects in metals, diffusion, and nanostructured metal, ceramic, composite, and biomaterials. He has presented more than 450 invited lectures around the world and has also edited ten books on these subjects. Dr. Siegel is a founder and Director of Nanophase Technologies Corporation, and was recognized for this effort by a 1991 US Federal Laboratory Consortium Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer. He is an Honorary Member of the Materials Research Societies of India and Japan, and a 1994 recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Senior Research Award in Germany. In 2001, he was named a RIKEN Eminent Scientist in Japan. Dr. Siegel also received a 2003 Deutsche Bank Prize “Pioneer of Nanotechnology – Nanomaterials” in Germany.

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