Research Highlight: Armaan Mehta ’26 Presents at Materials Research Society Conference
Earlier this month, BUA senior Armaan Mehta ’26 presented a poster at the Materials Research Society’s fall meeting and exhibit at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. Armaan’s poster, entitled “Stress Evolution During Low Energy Ar+ Bombardment of Si,” focused on stress evolution during low energy Argon bombardment of Silicon.
Armaan explains: “Stress evolution is seen as a possible cause of nano-ripples, a feature seen when a Silicon sample is bombarded with Argon. To determine whether stress is the cause of the nano-ripples, we used a real time MOSS system (multi-beam optical stress sensor) and then used an Atomic Force Microscope to inspect the sample. So far, our research suggests that the nano-ripples are independent of stress as the ripples are anisotropic (only in the x direction) whereas the stress is isotropic (in both x and y directions).”
Armaan “became interested in this project because the nanopatterns that are formed are a very recent phenomenon and understanding how stress relates to these patterns could have major implications. And of course, how can bombarding something in a vacuum chamber not be fun?!”
He co-presented his poster with Yasheng Jiang, a graduate student in physics at BU, and received research support from Professor Karl Ludwig in Boston University’s College of Engineering and Benli Jiang, a PhD candidate in physics at BU.