News Releases 2008

LETU Professor Receives Summer Fellowship At U.S. Naval Research Lab

Tue, May 13 2008

LeTourneau University associate professor of chemistry Dr. Gary DeBoer will spend 10 weeks this summer conducting research at the U.S. Naval Research Lab in Washington, D.C. This prestigious fellowship will enable DeBoer to use his expertise in nanotubes and chemistry to further research nanowires and their applications to advancing electronics technologies.

DeBoer described nanowires as so tiny that it would take tens of thousands of them laid side by side to equal the width of a single human hair. Nanowires are measured with instruments like scanning electron microscopes and atomic force microscopes. DeBoer, who earned his doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of Iowa, has been teaching general, inorganic, physical, quantum mechanics, and computational chemistry at LETU since 1998.

“We will use Raman spectroscopy techniques to evaluate nanowires made through electro-chemical methods,” DeBoer said. “Nanowires are already used in many electronic applications such as micro fuel cell membranes and may ultimately be used many more electronics applications such as TVs and iPods.”

DeBoer has spent several summers as a faculty fellow at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts working on research relating to space vehicles. He also has worked on carbon nanotube research during several NASA summer faculty fellowships at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

LeTourneau University is an interdenominational Christian university of nearly 4,000 students with academic majors in the aeronautical sciences, business, education, engineering, the liberal arts and sciences. LeTourneau University also offers business degrees and teacher certification programs online and at education centers in
Austin, Bedford, Dallas, Houston and Tyler.

 

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