Achievement

Ying Bao is working on a layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly of functional nanoscale building blocks in polyelectrolyte matrix. She has successfully converted hydrophobic upconversion nanocrystals (UCNCs) into hydrophilic ones and fabricated free-standing LbL films containing uniformly distributed UCNCs. Her work laid a solid foundation in constructing upconversion composite nanomembranes, one of the interdisciplinary research goals of the IGERT program. She published that work in the Journal of Materials Chemistry, 20, 8356-8361 and presented an update on her research progress at the ACS national meeting in Anaheim in March 2011.