PROFESSOR JENNIFER CHA

Department of NanoEngineering, UC San Diego
Materials Science Research Program

Office: CalIT2 2310
Phone: 858-822-4793
Fax: 858-534-9553
e-mail: jencha@ucsd.edu

Education:
Ph.D., Chemistry, UC Santa Barbara
B.A., Cell Biology, UC Berkeley
Biomolecular Materials and Nanoscale Assembly Lab

Research Interests:

Research in the Cha laboratory is focused on using biological and chemical approaches to assemble nanoscale materials, such as metal and semiconductor nanoparticles, nanorods, nanowires, and single walled carbon nanotubes. Due to their unique electronic, optical, and mechanical properties, nanoscale materials have been heavily explored for applications that range from medicine to electronics to energy. However, their sub-20nm dimensions have led to difficulties in directing their placement, orientation, or assembly into functional architectures. For example, a bottom-up approach that can direct the placement of nanoscale materials on lithographically defined surfaces is key to many electronics applications. For medical imaging and therapy, it is important to engineer ways to fabricate 3-dimensional biocompatible nanoscale assemblies, such as micelles or liposomes that can also release payloads.
Fundamental research in the Cha group is focused on the design and use of chemistry and engineering to synthesize and create well-defined organic-inorganic systems from nanoscale material building blocks. Because biological molecules, such as peptides, DNA, and proteins, provide significant capabilities for the assembly of nanoscale materials, a significant portion of the research centers around interfacing biological systems with nanoscale objects and using biomolecular interactions to drive the assembly. Specific applications include engineering nanoparticle-peptide systems for in vitro and in vivo detection, synthesizing inorganic-polypeptide systems into 2- and 3-dimensional arrays, and using DNA based bottom-up approaches to build parallel arrays of nanoelectronic devices.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

  1. J.N. Cha, G.D. Stucky, D.E. Morse, T. J. Deming, "Block Copolypeptide Mediated Biomimetic Synthesis of Ordered Silica Structures", Nature, 403, 289-292 (2000)
  2. J.N. Cha, M.H. Bartl, M.S. Wong, A. Popitsch, T.J. Deming, G. D. Stucky, "Microcavity Lasing from Block Peptide Hierarchically Assembled Quantum Dot Spherical Resonators", Nanoletters, 3, 907-911 (2003)
  3. J.N. Cha, H. Birkedal, L.E. Euliss, M. H. Bartl, M.S. Wong, T.J. Deming, G.D. Stucky, "Spontaneous Formation of Nanoparticle Vesicles from Homopolymer Polylectrolytes", J. Am. Chem. Soc., 125, 8285-8289 (2003)
  4. A. Fu, C.M. Micheel, J.N. Cha, H. Chang, H. Yang, A.P. Alivisatos, "Discrete Nanostructures of Quantum Dots/Au with DNA", J. Am. Chem. Soc., 126, 10832-10833 (2004)
  5. B. Gigliotti, B. Sakizzie, D.S. Bethune, R.M. Shelby, J.N. Cha, “Sequence-Independent Helical Wrapping of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes by Long Genomic DNA”, Nanoletters, 6, 159-164 (2006)
  6. D.A. LaVan and J.N. Cha, “Approaches for biological and biomimetic energy conversion”, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 103, 5251-5255 (2006)
  7. J.N. Cha, Y. Zhang, H.-S. P. Wong, S. Raoux, C. Rettner, L. Krupp, V. Deline, “Biomimetic Approaches for Fabricating High-Density Nanopatterned Arrays”, Chem. Mater., 19, 839-843 (2007)
  8. Y. Zhang, H.-S. P. Wong, S. Raoux, J.N. Cha, C.T. Rettner, L.E. Krupp, T. Topuria, D.J. Milliron, P.M. Rice, J.L. Jordan-Sweet, “Phase change nanodot arrays fabricated using a self-assembly diblock copolymer approach” Appl. Phys. Lett., 91, 131041-131043, (2007)
  9. J.W. Galusha, L.R. Richey, L.M. Clarke, M.D. Standing, J.N. Cha, M.H. Bartl, “Diamond-based photonic crystal structure in beetle scales”, Phys. Rev. E, 77(5-1) (2008)