There is an acute need in probing and understanding materials or structures crossing scales ranging from the nanometer to a macroscopic level for advanced applications.  For instance, when material structures are reduced to nanometer scale, van der Waals dispersion force often dominates surface adhesion.  This strong adhesion can lead to instability among tiny structures.  Another example can be found in self-assembled molecules, where quantum behavior dominates the charge conduction to a certain degree.  Current understandings of both phenomena are rather limited and primary challenges remain on the lack of a systematic or reliable approach to the issues.

In this talk, we will present our means to assemble hierarchical nanostructures reliably and thereby, enabling discovery of unique mechanical and electronic properties.  Our key contributions for mechanical properties include: 1) the finding of multiple buckling modes associated with periodic nanostructures; 2) an unusual approach to selectively promote certain modes of buckling for nanofabrication; and 3) the finding of periodic wave-like features atop the compliant substrate after restrictions on the beam base displacements were released.  Our work suggests that both the compliant substrate and interaction of neighboring structures through the deformation of the substrate dominate the buckling.  In the second part of the talk, single electronic behavior will be introduced to interpret both Coulomb blockade and staircases for assembled metallic nanoparticles.  Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM) will be used to provide a one-to-one correspondence of electronic properties to specific nanostructures on the surfaces.

Overall, this talk will present a concerted interdisciplinary effort that bridges engineering and physical science.

谭力，1994年从清华大学化工系高分子材料专业毕业，获得工程学士学位；1997年从清华大学土木工程系建筑材料专业毕业，获得工程硕士学位。同年赴美国密西根大学安阿堡分校（University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)高分子科学和工程专业(Macromolecular Science and Engineering)学习，于2002年9月获得博士学位。同年在密西根大学电子工程与计算机科学系从事博士后研究，次年转入加州大学戴维斯分校(University of California, Davis)继续博士后研究。于2005年8月加入内布拉斯加州大学林肯分校(University of Nebraska-Lincoln)任助理教授至今。