What will we do to make further advances in electronics when device scaling reaches nanometer dimensions and mechanisms employed in conventional devices are no longer useful? Do other physical mechanisms exist that can provide the gain and level restoration needed for robust logic circuits? Will radically new circuit and systems architectures need to be developed to match these new device concepts? What methods can be devised for manufacturing circuitry with such nanoscale dimensions? And, what range of applications will nanoscale electronics probably impact the most?

EE5950 will attempt to answer such questions by surveying current research in nanoscale science and technology, an exciting new interdisciplinary field which could potentially yield the breakthroughs of the future. We will begin with the end of the road for the scaling of conventional microelectronics, nanoscale silicon CMOS, and proceed to discuss a range of possibilities for using new physical mechanisms, device concepts, circuit architectures, and fabrication technologies for realizing electronics at the nanometer-scale.

For centuries we have been building things from the top down, developing improvements by downsizing bulk materials and structures. Now an exciting new field, nanotechnology, forces us to think small, from the bottom up. It asks researchers to begin at the molecular level, at dimensions of only a billionth of a meter, and it offers immense possibilities for new developments in electronics and computer technology, medicine, agriculture and more.

In four lectures, University of Minnesota faculty share some of the basic elements of their research that is taking them far beyond current limits to such inventions as self-assembling circuitry, molecular devices, and brain-like information processing schemes. Learn how nanoparticles will affect the development of new electronics, provide coatings for self-cleaning windows, create medicines with high bioavailability and effective carriers for human gene therapy. Future possibilities may be more exciting than science fiction!

Faculty Participants

- David Pui is Distinguished McKnight University Professor and director of the particle technology laboratory in the mechanical engineering department.

- Steve Campbell has a Ph.D. in physics, is the director of the microtechnology laboratory and a professor of electrical and computer engineering.

- C. Daniel Frisbie, Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is an associate professor in the chemical engineering and materials science department.

- Richard A. Kiehl is a professor of electrical and computer engineering where he leads an interdisciplinary research team of students working on the science and technology of nanoscale electronics.