Mike Zach Email & Phone Number

Oak Ridge, Tn

Stable and radioisotope research, development, technical services, and mentorship to influence how we solve problems

Oak Ridge, Tn

The Stable Isotope Group works to provide the nation with stable isotopes for research, academic, medical and industrial purposes. Our working group is responsible for the stewardship of the nation's strategic reserve inventory of stable isotopes. Much of our resource comes from the calutron project which was run from the end of World War II until 1998 when these instruments were decommisioned. During that time individual elements were enriched from natural abundance to some higher level of isotopic purity. This was done by creating a charge on the atoms and accelerating them through a magnetic field. These various elements are generally stored as oxides that need to be processed into some other form which will enable research. Our group has traditionally made these into ingots, rods, wires, sheets and foils. My background in both jewelry and nanotechnology allows me to perform the chemical and physical transformation for these traditional forms, but will also allow our group to expand our offerings to include the forms of nanoparticles, nanowires, thin films and patterned thin films.

Stevens Point, Wi

This educational foundation has been established to create opportunities for high school and college students by engaging them in nanotechnology research and stimulating them into wanting to make discoveries of their own. The foundation builds upon the Electroplate and Lift Lithography technology with the development of a kit that contains everything needed with the exception of water and the chemicals. As part of a class exercise, students can be one of the first few hundred students in the world to make copper microwires. The kit and supporting documentation guide students through necessary steps to grow and characterize microwires and even nanowires on our unique ultrananocrystalline diamond templates with the supplied tools including a full 3-electrode, web-enabled electrochemical potentiostat, a USB powered 700X microscope and a color Android tablet. The goal is to enable students with skills and the right tools to be the first person in the world to use the Electroplate and Lift Lithography technique for making new compositions of patterned nanowires. The experiments are set up to give confidence with the skills needed to make their own discoveries. After submission of promising preliminary data, the student would be invited to our laboratory or the laboratory of a collaborator to use more advanced techniques such as scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive spectroscopy to confirm they are truly the first in the world to make that type of nanowire. Future plans are to support high achieving student’s efforts to gain entrance to the colleges of their choice and to assist students in finding scholarships that will help their dreams for making future discoveries to come true.Kits are available with a 45 day lead time. Opportunities for sponsorship of individual kits, for schools, or geographic regions are available.Email for more information and whitepaper.

Michael Zach (Baccalaureate degree in Chemistry at UWSP, Ph.D. from University of California, Irvine) uses his non-traditional background to engineer new inventions and encourage undergraduate student participation in research projects. His interests are in expanding the range of materials and developing applications for large numbers of nanowires produced using simple bench-top techniques. He has numerous recognitions for his research including a Micro/NANO 25 Award, an R&D 100 Award and had his nanowire research featured on the covers of Science and ACS-Applied Materials and Interfaces magazines. In 2010 he received a NSF CAREER award. He is now a founder of a non-profit educational foundation to promote the nanowire/microwire kits and make STEM opportunities available to students.

Developed with my collaborators the first commercially producible ultra-fast hydrogen sensor which was awarded both a R&D100 Award (named one of the top 100 technologies added to the market place for 2005) and a MICRO/Nano25 Award (within top 25 inventions for 2005 utilizing nanotechnology). Synthesized unique superconductive samples for the Superconductivity and Magnetism producing single crystal samples to elicit new understanding of how current passes through materials.and what creates an upper limit of conductivity (published in Nature Physics).

Conceived and built a bioreactor for culturing extremophile microbes using high purity inert materials (teflon, titanium and glass) and then programmed the system to maintain and monitor growth with Labview. This attempted to reproduce an ecosystem that had never been cultured in a laboratory. Built an automated electrochemical atomic layer epitaxy system to help explore biomemetic patterning of quantum dot semiconducting particles without a clean room.

Doctor Of Philosophy (Phd), Chemistry

Bachelor Of Science (Bsc), Chemistry And Polymer Science

Education record