Aldo Migone honored for work

A national physics organization has named an SIUC professor as a fellow.

The Council of the American Physical Society honored Aldo D. Migone, chairman of the Department of Physics. The society's Division of Condensed Matter Physics elected Migone to the position. The organization elects no more than .5 percent of its membership as fellows.

"I was really happy when I heard about it," Migone said. "The nice thing is this is recognition from your peers who really know what it is you're working on."

The group cited Migone's work in the experimental study of "thermodynamics of one- and two-dimensional films adsorbed on carbon nanotubes, graphite and boron nitride." The experiments take place at the super small nanometric dimension. A nanometer, for instance, is equal to one millionth of a millimeter. Migone works with carbon nanotubes that typically are no more than 1.4 nanometers in diameter.

Migone's takes such materials, which have relatively large surface areas, places them inside a vacuum chamber and injects the chamber with various gases. This causes the materials to adsorb a tiny amount of the gas, creating a film only one to two atoms thick.

The work has both pure science and practical applications, Migone said. It can be use to test theoretical models related to one- and two-dimensional characteristics of materials. It also can be used to study practical means of storing gases such as hydrogen for use as a fuel for automobiles.

A native of Lima, Peru, Migone was mentioned along with six other Hispanic physicists also named as APS fellows in the Jan. 12 edition of "The Hispanic Physicist" newsletter