Materials chemistry, especially at the nanometer scale, is a growing area at companies large and small

Celia M. Henry
C&EN Washington

Wanted: Creative chemists to develop new materials.

   As conventional silicon technology approaches its limits, materials manufacturers face tough decisions on how to move forward, says Christopher B. Murray, a physical chemist at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. "The current industry road maps are beginning to get very challenging. What we are expecting in the road ahead is daunting, and we are also facing an increasing number of surprises because of the steep rate of change in the technology. It's time for people to look at new materials and new ways of doing things. That's where there may be more opportunities for creative chemical work."

Whether at established industry giants or young start-ups, the search is on for new materials to improve existing products or make ones only imagined--or not yet imagined. Chemical professionals of all types, including synthetic, physical, analytical, computational, and polymer chemists, as well as chemical engineers, are involved in this quest.

Opportunities abound at small and large companies. For example, Monica C. Dutton, director of intermediates technology at Solutia's Pensacola, Fla., facility, says that she is currently trying to fill eight openings in her area. Diane Dittenhafer, manager for university relations and recruiting and placement at Dow Chemical , says that Dow hires chemists in a variety of positions throughout the company. She says that, in an average year, Dow hires about 300 people (not just scientists) in North America to fill a combination of newly created positions and replacements for existing positions.

Materials are already a major focus at DuPont , and the company's $35 million alliance with Massachusetts Institute of Technology to discover new materials, announced in September 1999, affirms that its significance will continue well into the future. "Our focus on materials has always been strong. It's the major part of the company. I think the only thing you see here that is a little bit different is a stronger component of biology in this particular relationship with MIT than we've ever had around materials," says James M. Meyer, vice president of DuPont Central Research & Development. He believes that if the collaboration meets its objective of finding new materials, the natural result will be growth. However, he does not see the collaboration itself leading to immediate staffing needs.

Murray: an increasing number of surprises

At DuPont, scientists from a variety of backgrounds work in materials. Meyer says: "We look for a range of skills. We're looking for the ability to synthesize. We're looking for people who have classical engineering capabilities for building processes. With the growth of the science, we're looking for biologists who can create materials as well, through metabolic engineering and through an understanding of plant physiology." All of these people are then placed together in interdisciplinary teams where they can learn from each other. "We look for people who have fundamental skills, but we don't expect that they're going to spend their whole career in the discipline they got their degree in or did their research on in graduate school," he adds.

Symyx Technologies , located in Santa Clara, Calif., takes an unusual approach to materials discovery and development. The company borrows the combinatorial methods more often associated with pharmaceutical companies than chemical companies to discover materials with targeted properties, particularly in the areas of polymers, catalysts, and electronics materials.

Much of Symyx's workforce is made up of chemists; however, an equally large fraction are not chemists. "About half of the employees don't come from the chemistry departments of America," says Howard W. Turner, vice president for catalysis. "They come from the engineering and computer science departments because we build technology, robotics, and software that allow us to carry out thousands of experiments at a time. Our teams are comprised of synthetic chemists of all types, analytical chemists, physicists, physical chemists, polymer physicists, theoretical and computational chemists, and material scientists." Turner says that the "team demographics" at Symyx differ from any he has experienced in his years in the chemical industry. Symyx has grown rapidly since its founding in 1995, employing 76, 110, and 170 people by year-end 1997, 1998, and 1999, respectively, Turner says. "We're continuing to grow strongly," he reports.

Symyx was founded in the electronics materials area but quickly expanded to include catalysts and polymers. Initially, the company's scientists were strongly focused in physical chemistry, chemical physics, and solid-state chemistry, Turner says. After the company added polymer science and catalysis capabilities, organic, organometallic, and polymer chemists were hired. "Once those seeds were planted and we had three basic divisions, the growth became pretty much linear for all of the areas," Turner says.

Although Symyx does hire people straight from universities, previous industrial experience is also important, according to Turner. "It's only through experience in these industries that you can understand the problems that are really important and the issues that you confront when attempting to commercialize a success. We have to be knowledgeable about that, or we'll just be an academic lab."

Turner says that more than 50% of the company's employees come from postdoctoral positions or directly from graduate school. The rest come to Symyx with five to 15 years of industrial experience. However, Turner points out, whether from academia or industry, people with experience in the fields Symyx focuses on are unlikely to have experience with combinatorial methods.

In addition to combinatorial work in organic chemistry, Symyx has developed methods for the production of libraries of bulk powders and thin films. "When you go into our thin-film lab, you see devices that look like high-vacuum systems. It looks like a big physical chemistry lab," Turner comments. "We basically bring in chemists with solid-state inorganic backgrounds, expose them to the philosophy of making arrays of materials, and team them up with mechanical engineers and physicists to design machines to make libraries that are really relevant and produce materials that make sense from a solid-state inorganic point of view."

At Cambridge, Mass.-based E Ink, chemists are involved with making "electronic ink" that consists of microcapsules that contain white pigment particles and a dark dyed oil. The pigment particles have a surface charge, which gives them an electrophoretic mobility. Application of an electric field pushes the pigment particles across the microcapsules. When the particles are at the front of the capsule, it appears white. If the particles are in the back, the dye makes the capsule look dark.

	An E Ink employee holds a bottle of electronic ink.

E Ink employs a variety of chemists to work on its products. "We have polymer chemists, we have synthetic chemists, and we have materials scientists," says Barrett Comiskey, cofounder and engineering scientist at E Ink. "We don't particularly look for any one type of background. We hire smart, creative people who can work on different types of problems. We hire people who have demonstrated the ability to learn new things." The ink chemists focus on pigments, pigment dispersion, dyes, and the development of all of these components for high-end electronic display.

E Ink continues to grow, with approximately 100 employees now, up from 40 a year ago. "We're still growing quite a bit," Comiskey says. "We're continuing to grow in R&D and everywhere else."

"Nanostructured chemicals" are the focus of Hybrid Plastics, located in Fountain Valley, Calif. Joseph D. Lichtenhan, company cofounder and president, explains that these materials are made of silica spheres that can copolymerize with organic monomers. "We have taken the smallest possible particles of silica and tricked them into acting just like any other organic reagent or monomer," he claims.

Hybrid Plastics currently has only seven people working in production, all of whom are chemists. The company, however, is growing, Lichtenhan says. "We've specifically targeted people who have experience with some aspect of nanotechnology. A lot of these might be people with buckyball experience in the academic world looking for a job when they get out. Or, they're people who have engineering experience, maybe in the electronics area, who are used to working with very small structures. Any kind of nanoscience background is very important, whether it's from the physics side or from a chemical or materials science perspective. We're certainly believers in it, but this whole nanosci- ence/nanotechnology area is really just starting to emerge."

Zyvex , a nanotechnology company based in Richardson, Texas, is taking a physicist's or engineer's view of materials. "The kind of chemistry we're doing is a bit unlike what people are used to," says James R. Von Ehr II, founder and chief executive officer of Zyvex. "We want to actually be able to deal with individual molecules, pick them up, move them around, and build things one molecule at a time."

Zyvex is seeking complete positional control of all the molecules in a system in order to build precise molecular structures. "Our ultimate goal is to be able to build machinery at the molecular scale. What makes it all work is the fact that we expect to build a very large number of those machines, all doing something in parallel. Instead of just having one manipulator arm picking and placing an individual molecule, we may have a mole of manipulator arms."

Despite the company's unconventional approach to materials, Von Ehr says that they are not looking for anything unconventional in terms of education and training. "What we're intrigued by when we talk to chemists is whether they have thought about individual molecules, whether they are receptive to our idea of a molecular building block, which is a molecule that can be individually handled and stuck to other molecules of its kind somehow."

Von Ehr expects that the molecular building blocks will be organic molecules, but the company is flexible in its vision. "At some point, we may even be hiring inorganic chemists," Von Ehr says. "We think it's an organic molecule because people generally have more skill at working with those in terms of small, precise building blocks. But we have a very open mind. Some properties we know we want--a fairly compact molecule that can be joined to others of its kind to form 3-D structures. Within that description, there's plenty of room for innovation."

Zyvex currently has 15 employees and expects to add 18 to 20 more people this year. "We're looking for synthetic organic chemists--another one or two of those--and one or two physical chemists," Von Ehr says. "So far, we have mostly experimental chemists, as opposed to theoretical chemists. At some point this year or next year, we'll probably have a position for a theoretical chemist as well."

Eventually, Zyvex would like to establish a whole stable of molecular building blocks. "I think, as we go forward and get some of the basics starting to work, we will be looking for more and more chemists. We have a two-stage process of what we're trying to do. The first is to build things with molecular building blocks. Stage two is, as we get better and better with building, we'll be trying to design a building block that will present an individual atom in just the right way. Ultimately, our goal remains to build with individual atoms. We probably have to hold those atoms in a molecule, though, which means we will need lots of chemists helping to design molecules that interact with other molecules."

At IBM, as at the small companies, interdisciplinary research is the hallmark of materials research. Murray works with a group that is devising ways to chemically prepare nanostructured materials, including magnetic, semiconductor, dielectric, and ferroelectric materials. "For each of those important classes of materials, we try to come up with chemical routes to make model systems to map out what the properties of these systems are going to be like when you squeeze them down to just a few atoms," Murray says.

Murray comments that, in conducting their research, they rely on a broad range of scientists. "You have a full spectrum of other physicists, engineers, and so on that you need to do a good interdisciplinary project. The success of projects really depends on a broad base of interactions--not isolated talents or skills, but teams of people who get together using their expertise so that you can move much more quickly."

Lichtenhan believes that communications skills are the most important characteristic of potential employees. "Whether it's among engineers, chemists, or product-line support persons, in a small company, communication is absolutely critical. We really can't hide a bad apple."

Martin L. Cohen, a principal research scientist in the polymer additives program at Cytec Industries , Stamford, Conn., agrees that communication skills are vital. "It's an important part of being in a commercial setting--communicating your ideas, your progress, and your work to your peers and also to your management."

Another important qualification is a general knowledge of materials science and materials applications. "We want people who are familiar with materials science concepts and familiar with the applications of different types of materials--what's suitable for a different type of application. We don't necessarily want them to be thorough experts in each of those areas," Lichtenhan says.

IBM's Murray believes that a broad background is helpful for focusing on materials research. "If you want to be a materials chemists and solve materials and engineering problems using a chemist's techniques, then you have to understand a little bit about the perspective of all the people you will be interacting with," he suggests. "In terms of preparing to do work in nanoscale science and technology, for me the most rewarding part is having a balanced exposure to preparation, characterization, and integration of the materials into useful structures. Unfortunately, that means making an extra effort to move outside the bounds of a particular department or a particular program."

Cohen recommends that undergraduates who are interested in an industrial position, including materials research, participate in a cooperative or internship program--whether or not they plan to go to graduate school. "You just can't beat that sort of experience. You see what skills are really needed. Then you come back to your academic setting, and you can focus on acquiring or honing those particular skills."

Although most companies prefer individuals with advanced degrees, there is still a place for bachelor's level chemists and chemical engineers. "I spend a lot of my time hiring people," Solutia's Dutton says. "I'm constantly looking for that bright-eyed person who has lots of ideas and isn't yet jaded about how things have been done before and didn't work. The lines between the degrees are more and more blurred as their career paths grow in this company. The degree that they get in the field that they choose, at least at Solutia, is a means of getting through the front gate. After that, their own talents, abilities, and drive will get them the promotions and the opportunities they are looking for."

As an example, Dutton cites one person who didn't even have a degree when he started working at Solutia as a technician in the analytical laboratory. He finished his bachelor's degree but is now doing independent research, something most bachelor's level chemists at Solutia don't get a chance to do. "He's much more than just a pair of hands. He's actually designing experiments and is contributing to the research."

Turner notes that Symyx also has a "reasonably sized staff" of employees with bachelor's and master's degrees who work under the direction of the Ph.D.-level principal investigators. However, career advancement at Symyx is limited only by a person's capabilities, not his or her education. "There are some master's level people who are dedicated enough and have achieved enough to basically take on a principal investigator role," he says. "But that's the exception rather than the rule."

In addition to the people who discover or develop new materials, chemists are also needed to characterize them. William J. Simonsick is a mass spectrometrist who works for DuPont Automotive. He describes materials characterization in the past as having been more of an art than a science. However, that's changing. "Many of the newer analytical techniques, primarily because of the biological emphasis on characterization and understanding of structure, can be applied to the characterization of materials, polymers, and things along those lines," Simonsick says.

Simonsick started out in environmental analytical chemistry in graduate school. However, he says that, as long as he is an analytical chemist, the exact molecules he works with don't matter. "As an analytical chemist, I develop new techniques that would be applicable in materials science but also applicable to any sort of larger molecules. That's what's fun about being an analytical chemist. You get to interact with a lot of physical chemists, biologists, and materials chemists. You really interact with people in several different disciplines. You learn a lot."

In the past, nanotechnology was thought to be a fringe area. However, the field is getting ready to step into the mainstream. In January, President Clinton announced a $227 million increase, to $497 million in the fiscal 2001 budget, for nanotechnology research. The funds, known as the National Nanotechnology Initiative , will be divided among the National Science Foundation , the Department of Defense , the National Aeronautics & Space Administration , the Department of Commerce , and the National Institutes of Health .

Representatives of companies focused on nanotechnology believe that the initiative will help get more people interested in the field. "It sort of legitimizes the field," Von Ehr says.

Lichtenhan sees the initiative as a "big boost" to his company and the field in general. "I see the nanotechnology initiative as being greatly needed and a step in the right direction. It's going to really help the U.S. open up the field of nanoscience," he says. "It doesn't matter whether the funding goes to academia or to industry, because both end up working together anyway." In addition, he predicts that the nanotechnology initiative will create students who can be hired by "companies that are going to try to commercialize some of this nanotechnology."

Murray also suspects that the money--and the inevitable hype and attention--will attract people to the field. However, he emphasizes that, with or without the initiative, there is always room for talented scientists. "For talented people who are really able to do innovative work in this field, the opportunities are very bright. I hope that we will have an opportunity to tighten up and mature as a field and actually have standards that are comparable to any other area of scientific research."

The area of materials science and especially nanomaterials continues to develop and evolve; only time will tell where it will lead. "This whole area of nanoscience has to be tamed," Lichtenhan asserts. "It has to find its economic viability and worthiness to even stay around. It takes a lot of different people with a lot of different skill sets to really make this emerging area of science practical."

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