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January 28, 2006
UCD's Professor M.
Saif Islam wins NSF 'Early Career' Award to Study Nanomanufacturing
of Nanowire Based Devices and Circuits.
Assistant Professor M. Saif Islam was recently awarded a
Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award by the National Science
Foundation. The Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the NSF's
most prestigious awards in support of the early career-development
activities of those teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate
research and education within the context of the mission of their
organization. Such activities build a firm foundation for a lifetime of
integrated contributions to research and education. His work is titled
"Massively Parallel and Manufacturable Self-Assembly Techniques for
Interfacing and Integrating Nanowires in Devices and Circuits".
Dr. Islam, while working for
Hewlett-Packard Laboratories before joining UC Davis, has developed two
novel nano-device integration and mass-production techniques termed
'nano-bridges' and 'nano-colonnades' that are entirely compatible with
existing microelectronics fabrication processes. His current research
objectives include the development of massively parallel nano-structures
synthesis and integration processes for potential applications in bio-chemical
sensors and sensor networks, nanoelectronics, nanophotonics, memory and
logic devices for future computing.
Research under the new grant will continue the
development of new type of devices and circuits that will be formed
starting with a single atom. The goal will be to minimize the device size
and increase the density of devices in future electronic and photonic
systems. Dr. Islam’s bridging techniques will connect the devices to
the rest of the world without using expensive and tedious interfacing techniques.
From the abstract:
The research objective of this Faculty Early Career
(CAREER) award addresses the long-standing issues of interfacing and
interconnecting one-dimensional semiconductor nanowires with devices and
circuits and proposes to develop novel mass-manufacturable solutions. The
broad goals of this program are to advance our device physics understanding
of nanowire-bulk interfaces and to facilitate new practical technologies
for design, integration and mass production of nanowire based devices and
systems with innovative quantum effects. Despite significant progress in
nanowire synthesis and many promising single device demonstrations,
applications of nanowires have been stalled by our inability to
controllably incorporate them within integrated circuits. Unlike the
research-based approach of sequentially connecting electrodes to individual
nanowires for device physics studies, this research will employ a novel
technique of epitaxial bridging of nanowires between pre-fabricated
electrodes for reproducible fabrication of ultra-dense and low-cost device
and circuit arrays. Growth conditions, doping techniques and wafer
processing methods will be explored to understand and optimize
nanowire-bulk connections. The educational objectives of the CAREER program
are focused on significantly impacting the research experience of both
graduate and undergraduate students at the University
of California – Davis and
the large numbers of minority students in Oakland public school system. The PI
proposes to develop a new nanotechnology course titled
“Nanostructured Devices: Physics and Technology” that will
serve to introduce and excite undergraduate students about
nano-manufacturing and the career opportunities that will be available to
them. The PI will develop a program for inseminating knowledge of the
advancements in nanotechnology into Bay Area
Technology School (BAYTECH), a high school in a
predominantly underprivileged and socio-economically impacted neighborhood
of downtown Oakland, California.
The proposed research plan will greatly impact the
fields of Nanomanufacturing by transitioning nanowires into a reliable
technology through the development of cost-effective mass-manufacturing
methods with revolutionary new capabilities and performances for wide
variety of applications. The outcome will lead to unprecedented
device density, ultimately making the nanowire based devices a commercial
reality with a major improvement in the cost/performance ratio. This will
facilitate mass-manufacturing of devices for electronic, photonic, energy
storage and conversion, advanced light sources, sensing, and biological
systems. The research community will also benefit in the near term through
the development of a universal “test-bed” for combining
conventional microfabrication (bottom-up) and synthetic nanofabrication
(top-down) where self-assembled nanostructures mate to pre-fabricated
microstructures to test new concepts in quantum devices.
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