Rachel M. Rasmussen
Biography
Rachel M. Rasmussen received her BS in Chemistry with a minor in Mathematics and Music from Rockford College, IL in 2006. As an undergraduate, she had interdisciplinary research experience through the University of Notre Dame and Pennsylvania State University as well as leadership experience through being a committee chair for student government and president of the music club. These experiences propelled her to look outside the Chemistry Department "box" when exploring her research interests upon entering graduate school at Notre Dame in July of 2006. She currently has co-advisors (Grace Xing in Electrical Engineering and Ken Kuno in Chemistry), serves as the Graduate Student Union department representative, and is an Arthur J. Schmitt fellow.
Research Interests
Rachel researches the electrical and optical properties of quasi-1D photo-responsive materials (mainly solution-liquid-solid synthesized II-IV semiconductor nanowires) through the fabrication and study of photodetector devices. She deals with issues like:
- reproducibly placing controlled amounts of NWs on a given surface,
- manipulating the location/orientation of the NWs on that surface,
- measuring NW responsivity, polarization anisotropy, mobility/conductivity, and carrier lifetimes, and
- exploring ways of integrating aligned NW arrays into devices on flexible substrates.
The significance of this project is the enhancement in our understanding of the photon interaction and electron behavior in these materials (for the development of high-sensitivity photodetectors, solar cells, or technologies such as flexible displays).
She presented early results of her work in June of 2007 by giving a "Late News" talk at the Electronic Materials Conference, hosted at Notre Dame and also presented more recent results at the NRI MIND kick-off poster session at Notre Dame in June of 2008.
