David Gidley

With many years of expertise in studying antimatter and how it interacts with normal matter, Professor Gidley is developing and applying positron and positronium spectroscopies to probe porous materials at and below the nanometer scale. The development of materials with molecular level porosity engineered to maximize specific performance goals is an important aspect of the nanotechnology initiative. Such microporous and mesoporous materials include bulk solids, composites, powders, membranes, and thin films. Professor Gidley works with academic and industrial partners on wide-ranging applications in energy research (Metal-Organic-Frameworks and zeolites for gas storage and separation), microelectronic devices (low-K interlayer dielectrics and barriers), and fundamental polymer physics (surface, interface, and thin film properties of glassy polymers and composites thereof). His lab has a focused variable-energy beam of positrons for non-destructive depth-profiling of surfaces and thin films as well as several positron lifetime spectrometers for analyzing bulk samples in a variety of environments. To extend his lab’s capabilities in positron spectroscopy, Professor Gidley collaborates with the intense positron beam effort at the North Caroline State University nuclear reactor and with the positronium group at ETH-Zurich.

Professor Gidley is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Selected Publications

Positron Annihilation as a Method to Characterize Porous Materials, (H-g Peng and R.S. Vallery), Annual Review of Materials Research 36, 49 (2006).

Water Sensitivity in Zn₄O-Based MOFs is Structure and History Dependent, (P. Guo, D. Dutta, A. Wong-Foy, and A. Matzger), Journal of the American Chemical Society 137, 2651 (2015).

Positronium Emission Spectra from Self-Assembled Metal-Organic-Frameworks, (P. Crivelli, D. Cooke, B. Barbiellini, B. L. Brown, J.I. Feldblyum, P. Guo, L. Gerchow, and A.J. Matzger), Physical Review B Rapid Communications 89, 241103(R) (2014).

Role of Molecular Architecture on the Vitrification of Thin Polymer Systems, (Emmanouil Glynos, Bradley Frieburg, Hyunjoon Oh, Ming Liu, and Peter Green), Physical Review Letters 106, 128301 (2011).

Immobilized Polymer Layers on Spherical Nanoparticles, (S. Harton, S. Kumar, H. Yang, T. Koga, K. Hicks, H. Lee, J. Mijovic, M. Liu, and R. Vallery), Macromolecules 43, 3415 (2010).

Evolution of Nanoscale Pore Structure in Coordination Polymers During Thermal and Chemical Exposure Revealed by Positron Annihilation, (M. Liu, A. Wong-Foy, R. Vallery, W. Frieze, J. Schnobrich, and A. Matzger), Advanced Materials 22, 1598 (2010).

Evidence for Depth-Dependent Structural Changes in Freeze-Thaw-Cycled Dry Nafion Using Positron Annihilation Lifetime Spectroscopy, (R.C. McDonald, Tracy Sanderson, and R.S. Vallery), Journal of Membrane Science 332, 89 (2009).

Assessment of the Fatigue Transformation Zone in Bulk Metallic Glasses Using Positron Annihilation Spectroscopy, (Ming Liu, R.S. Vallery, M.E. Launey, J.J. Kruzic), Journal of Applied Physics 105, 093501 (2009).

The Direct Patterning of Nanoporous Interlayer Dielectric Insulator Films by Nanoimprint Lithography, (H.W. Ro, R.L. Jones, H-g Peng, D.R. Hines, H-J Lee, E.K. Lin, A. Karim, D. Y. Yoon, and C.L. Soles), Advanced Materials 19, 2919 (2007).

Resolution of the Orthopositronium-Lifetime Puzzle, (R.S. Vallery and P.W. Zitzewitz), Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 203402 (2003).

Field(s) of Study

• Atomic, Molecular, & Optical Experiment