University of Toronto Materials Science & Engineering (MSE) researchers have demonstrated for the first time the key mechanism behind how energy levels align in a critical group of advanced materials. This discovery is a significant breakthrough in the development of sustainable technologies such as dye-sensitized solar cells and organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs).

Transition metal oxides, which are best-known for their application as super-conductors, have made possible many sustainable technologies developed over the last two decades, including organic photovoltaics and organic light-emitting diodes. While it is known that these materials make excellent electrical contacts in organic-based devices, it wasn’t known why.

Until now.

In research published today in Nature Materials, MSE PhD Candidate Mark T. Greiner and Professor Zheng-Hong Lu, Canada Research Chair (Tier I) in Organic Optoelectronics, lay out the blueprint that conclusively establishes the principle of energy alignment at the interface between transition metal oxides and organic molecules.

MSE PhD Candidate Mark T Greiner (pictured left), with his supervisor Professor Zheng-Hong Lu, has established a blueprint for energy alignment that could enable scientists and engineers to design simpler and more efficient organic solar cells and OLEDs.

“The energy-level of molecules on materials surfaces is like a massive jigsaw puzzle that has challenged the scientific community for a very long time,” says Professor Lu. “There have been a number of suggested theories with many critical links missing. We have been fortunate to successfully build these links to finally solve this decades-old puzzle.”

With this piece of the puzzle solved, this discovery could enable scientists and engineers to design simpler and more efficient organic solar cells and OLEDs to further enhance sustainable technologies and help secure our energy future.

The paper, entitled “Universal Energy-Level Alignment of Molecules on Metal Oxides,” is available online.

This publication marks the third major research paper in 2011 for Professor Lu’sOrganic Optoelectronics Research Group. Science published PhD Candidate Michael G. Helander’s “Chlorinated Indium Tin Oxide Electrodes with High Work Function for Organic Device Compatibility” on April 14 and Nature Phototonicspublished PhD Candidate Zhibin Wang’s “Unlocking the Full Potential of Organic Light-Emitting Diodes on Flexible Plastic” on October 30.

On November 21, the CBC’s documentary channel will air When Dreams Take Flight, which follows UTIAS PhD candidate Todd Reichert (EngSci 0T5) and his team, as they construct and fly a human-powered ornithopter.

The U of T Engineering graduate students made aviation history in August 2011, when their ornithopter, “Snowbird,” became the first ever to achieve sustained flight.

Make sure to catch the documentary on November 21 at 9 pm ET. For more information on the documentary, visit the CBC website.

Biomedical implants have the potential to transform everything – from drug delivery, to orthopedics and neurology. They’re crucial to new treatments that will help meet the challenges posed by an aging population – and transform the practice of medicine.

There’s a strong business case for developing biomedical implants, noted Professor Paul Santerre, Director, Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering (IBBME). Through 2014, the American market for implantable medical devices will grow more than 8 per cent annually to $49 billion (U.S.), according to Cleveland-based market research firm the Freedonia Group.

Globally, researchers are zooming in on several key areas, said Professor Santerre, who oversees Canada’s largest biomedical program. They’re developing devices for aging patients, especially stents and other cardiac implants.

Another burgeoning field is orthobiologics, explained Professor Santerre. Its applications include the use of anti-microbial agents with orthopedic implants to treat degradation of bone structure around the healing area.

Professor Santerre is also excited about real-time diagnostics, combination drug-delivery devices that use biomaterials and neural implants and therapies. “The whole area is getting ready to explode as a result of an aging society and Alzheimer’s and other kinds of dementia and diseases that begin to show an onset as we roll into our 80s,” he said.

At IBBME, which has 36 core and 55 cross-appointed faculty affiliated with 10 teaching hospitals, many scientists do research connected to biomedical implants. For example, rehabilitation technology sciences team leader Professor Milos Popovic(IBBME) has helped quadriplegic patients regain upper-body movement by administering regular electrical stimulation to their tissues.

“We’re conceiving systems that would be implanted for anywhere between a week and four months, depending on what we’re trying to achieve,” said Professor Santerre.

Looking ahead, he sees great promise for tissue engineering, another implant-related IBBME research area.

He believes that by 2020, it will be possible to implant a new coronary artery built by your own cells. “[For] more complex organs, it’s going to take a bit longer, but we’re getting there.”

To read the full story, visit the Globe and Mail .

The CBC’s The Nature of Things recently explored nanotechnology and all its potential in saving the planet.

Nanotechnology is a universe where scientists explore matter on a scale 80,000 times smaller than a human hair. It’s a gigantic global laboratory where scientists converge from all disciplines, and dedicate themselves to observing and manipulating the smallest particles in the natural world.

Professor Ted Sargent (ECE) sees a future where nano-particles applied to solar cells transform the way we capture energy. “The imaginative possibilities that emerge when you make low-cost, flexible and high-efficiency solar cells, are really limitless,” explained Professor  Sargent, a Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology.

In June 2011, Professor Sargent and his research team discovered a new solar cell that may pave the way to inexpensive coatings that efficiently convert the sun’s rays to electricity.

Watch the episode online , or see it on CBC News Network on November 10.

Making medical devices that address the challenge of delivering safe care to patients is standard procedure at the Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering (IBBME). Just ask Professor Paul Santerre, IBBME Director, who developed Endexo Technology through his spin-off company, Interface Biologics Inc (IBI).

In July, IBI announced that the largest provider of dialysis products, Fresenius Medical Care, would apply the company’s Endexo Technology to dialysis circuits for treating end-stage renal disease.

Now, Navilyst Medical has launched BioFlo, a peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC) that uses Endexo in five clinical centres in Canada. The U.S. will launch BioFlo in early 2012.

Endexo is a self-locating fluoro-oligomeric additive that reduces platelet adhesion and activation, protein adsorption and thrombus formation. Endexo is present on all surfaces of the BioFlo PICC and remains present for the life of the catheter. It also reduces the need for anti-coagulants, such as herapin, which patients may adversely react to, or antibiotics that may be associated with bacterial resistance.

“Endexo products are now in young neonatal children at Canadian hospitals, including the Ottawa Civic Hospital and other centres in Canada,” said Professor Santerre. “Interface Biologics is only one of the 16 current IBBME start-up companies. Imagine the impact that awaits the healthcare market from this great Institute.”

Technology transfer is a priority at IBBME. With the assistance of MaRS, the Centre for the Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine, and the U of T Innovations and Partnership Office, innovative technologies and processes are brought out of the lab and into the hospital. Techna, a new University Health Network-University of Toronto healthcare technologies commercialization initiative that launches next week, will also help bridge the gap between research and the clinical application of technologies.

For more information, visit the IBBME website.

Professor Torstein A. Utigard (MSE) was named a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy, and Petroleum (CIM) at the 50th Anniversary Conference of Metallurgists (COM2011) awards banquet, held in Montréal on October 3. CIM’s Fellowship Program recognizes members who have distinguished themselves through outstanding contributions to the mining, metallurgical, or petroleum industries. Professor Utigard was one of eight fellows inducted this year.

Professor Utigard is the holder of the Gerald R. Heffernan Chair in Materials Processing at the University of Toronto. He has established an international reputation as an outstanding researcher in the science and technology of pyrometallurgical processing of non-ferrous metals. With over 150 publications, 11 patents and three others pending, Professor Utigard has pioneered numerous developments pertaining to the physical chemistry aspects of metals refining. He has supervised close to 40 researchers, played a major role within professional societies and facilitated international collaborations between industry and academia. In the Department of Materials Science & Engineering and through many short courses in industry and various symposia, Professor Utigard has trained numerous undergraduate and graduate students as well as engineers and operators in the areas of mineral processing, thermodynamics, kinetics and extraction of metals. In all of these activities, he has been an ambassador par excellence for the engineering profession.

In the same evening, Professor Utigard was also recognized with the Best Paper Award, Non-Ferrous Pyrometallurgy category, for a paper titled “Fluid Bed Roasting of Nickel-Copper Matte,” published in the Canadian Metallurgical Quarterly (Vol. 49, No.2 pp.lSS-162, 2010).

“I am very happy that Professor Utigard’s many years of sustained excellence in research and teaching is being recognized by the CIM,” says Professor Jun Nogami, Chair of the Department of Materials Science & Engineering. “I hope that all of our faculty members, as well as the generations of alumni that he has taught and advised will join me in congratulating him.”