Academic literature on the topic 'Electrical engineering|Physics|Materials science'

Materials research and education is currently one of the liveliest areas of science and engineering and is likely to be so for many decades. It is an outstanding example of an interdisciplinary field; persons who call themselves materials researchers are found in departments of chemistry, physics, metallurgy, ceramics, electrical engineering, chemical engineering, and mechanical engineering, and also in many departments that now call themselves by the name “materials science and engineering.” The field has grown so rapidly that the term “materials science and engineering,” has many different meanings. In fact, most of the funding that supports materials science and engineering research is awarded to investigators in the more traditional disciplines, and the vast majority of scientists and engineers working in the field were educated in these traditional core disciplines.There is no question that the field of materials science and engineering is a success. However, is materials science and engineering now a discipline as well as a field? Should MS&E departments exist and what should be their educational mission? Should MS&E departments offer undergraduate and graduate majors? These questions are being discussed by many university faculties as they work to devise effective research structures and educational programs to respond to the growth of interest in a field that does not fit neatly into any single traditional discipline, but is far too important to ignore.Recently, the University Materials Council appointed a committee to consider these issues and specifically address the challenge of creating effective, attractive programs of undergraduate education in materials science and engineering.

The Materials Research Center at Northwestern University is an interdisciplinary center that supports theoretical and applied research on experimental advanced materials. Conceived during the post-Sputnik era, it is now in its 26th year.The Center, housed in the university's Technological Institute, was one of the first three centers funded at selected universities by the federal government in 1960. The federal government, through the National Science Foundation, now supplies $2.4 million annually toward the Center's budget, and Northwestern University supplements this amount. Approximately one third of the money is used for a central pool of essential equipment, and the other two thirds is granted to professors for direct support of their research. Large amounts of time on supercomputers are also awarded to the Materials Research Center from the National Science Foundation and other sources.The Center's role enables it to provide partial support for Northwestern University faculty working at the frontiers of materials research and to purchase expensive, sophisticated equipment. All members of the Center are Northwestern University investigators in the departments of materials science and engineering, chemical engineering, electrical engineering, chemistry, or physics. The Materials Research Center is a major agent in fostering cross-departmental research efforts, thereby assuring that materials research at Northwestern University includes carefully chosen groups of faculty in physics, chemistry, and various engineering departments.

Every spring, I teach a one-semester, graduate-level course on materials transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Thanks to the explosion of interest in nanotechnology, what was once a course primarily for metallurgists on imaging crystallographic defects and x-ray microanalysis now attracts a much broader audience. I have had students in the course from almost all the engineering departments at UW Madison (materials, chemical, mechanical, electrical, civil), from the basic sciences (physics, chemistry, geology), and from other departments (including one from Food Science!). The enrollment in the concurrent laboratory class on TEM operation is similar.This diverse student body has two consequences. First, the students' background knowledge varies widely. Some have already taken a materials characterization course that included some TEM, but others barely know what a crystal structure is.

It is important that today’s outstanding engineer must have knowledge of many sciences and disciplines. Interdisciplinary skills help an engineer to cope with the changing social, economic, and political conditions that influence technology and its development. Nanotechnology and biotechnology remind us how important it is to be knowledgeable in many areas of applied science and engineering. A nanotechnology engineer should be well familiar with physics, materials science, surface chemistry, composites, quantum mechanics, materials, and mathematics. Biotechnology merges physics, engineering, and chemistry with biology, life sciences, and medicine. The multifaceted approach helps define and resolve problems in biomedical research and in clinical medicine for improved healthcare. The most surprising discoveries have been made at the boundaries of different disciplines. Alessandro Volta’s electric battery was a meeting of chemistry and physics.

The environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM™) and variable pressure electron microscope (VPSEM) have become accepted tools in the contemporary electron microscopy facility. Their flexibility and their ability to image almost any sample with little, and often no, specimen preparation has proved so attractive that each manufacturer of scanning electron microscopes now markets a low vacuum model.The University of Michigan Electron Microbeam Analysis Laboratory (EMAL) operates two variable pressure instruments, an ElectroScan E3 ESEM and a Hitachi S3200N VPSEM. The E3 ESEM was acquired in the early 1990s with funding from the Amoco Foundation and it has been used to examine an extremely wide variety of different materials. Since EMAL serves the entire university community, and offers support to neighboring institutions and local industry, the types of materials examined span a wide range. There are users from Materials Science & Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Nuclear Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Geology, Biology, Biophysics, Pharmacy and Pharmacology.

Engineering Science Based on Modelling and Simulation (M & S) is defined as the discipline that provides the scientific and mathematical basis for simulation of engineering systems. These systems range from microelectronic devices to automobiles, aircraft, and even oilfield and city infrastructure. In a word, M & S combines knowledge and techniques in the fields of traditional engineering - electrical, mechanical, civil, chemical, aerospace, nuclear, biomedical and materials science - with the knowledge and techniques of fields such as computer science, mathematics and physics, and social sciences. One of the problems that arise during solar cell operation is that of heating them because of permanent solar radiation. Since the layers of which they are made are very small and thick it is almost impossible to experimentally determine the temperature in each layer. In this sense, the finite element method comes and provides a very good prediction and gives results impossible to obtain by other methods. This article models and then simulates the thermal composition of two types of solar cells, one of them having an additional layer of silicon carbide that aims to lower the temperature in the lower layer, where the electronic components stick to degradable materials under the influence of heat.

Nanoelectronics has the potential, and is indeed expected, to revolutionize information technology by the use of the impressive characteristics of nanodevices such as carbon nanotube transistors, molecular diodes and transistors, etc. A great effort is being put into creating an introductory course in nanotechnology. However, practically all courses focus on the physics, chemistry, and materials science aspects of this discipline. On the other hand, a more abstract, design-oriented introduction is desirable for electrical and computer engineering majors. In order to teach design-oriented nanotechnology, the teaching curriculum must be extended to include new concepts. In particular, it is necessary to supply the design principles, device models, and software simulation tools. This article describes our approach for introducing nanotechnology system design into the Electrical and Computer Engineering undergraduate curriculum at Stony Brook University. The approach consists of developing a nanodevice library for SPICE-like simulator and a 3-week module on nanotechnology system design utilizing this library. The module will be woven into an existing course on Integrated Electronics.

As device sizes approach the nanoscale, new opportunities arise from harnessing the physical and chemical properties at the nanoscale. It is now feasible to contemplate new nanoelectronic systems based on new devices with completely new system architectures. This paper will give an overview of the materials, technology, and device opportunities in the nanoscale era. So far, much of the nanoscale sciences have been researched in the physics, chemistry, and materials science communities. While there have been plenty of good science in the nano world, nanotechnology is still at its infancy. The engineering community is poised to make a major impact in transforming good nanoscience into useful nanotechnology. The disciplined performance benchmarking against alternatives as practiced by the engineering community will prove to be invaluable to the development of new nanotechnologies. Examples of such performance benchmarking exercises will be shown and directions for future work will be suggested.

Materials research is a long-standing tradition at Carnegie Mellon. Since its inception as Carnegie Technical Schools in 1906, the metallurgy program has flourished on the campus. Evolving from a single department involved in metals research formed in 1906, leading-edge, interdisciplinary materials research has grown considerably, with materials-related research now carried out in many departments. These include Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Civil Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Mathematics, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, and Mellon Institute (an affiliate of the University), and, of course, Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science (MEMS). It is beyond the scope of this article to cover every aspect of materials-related research at Carnegie Mellon. Consequently, we have decided to concentrate on materials and topics of particular interest to MRS members.The current research pertaining to materials at Carnegie Mellon can be broadly classified by material type into three categories: metals and alloys, polymers, and electronic and magnetic materials.The major thrust on research in metals and alloys is in MEMS. In addition, there are a number of complementary efforts in Chemical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. For example, Prof. Sides of Chemical Engineering is evaluating electrolytic extraction of aluminum from its ores, while Professors Prinz, Sinclair, Steif, Swedlow, and Wright of Mechanical Engineering are examining the macroscopic flow behavior of metals and alloys and its relevance in manufacturing engineering. Prof. Prinz is also interested in vibratory compaction of metal powders, both from experimental and modeling points of view.

Materials Engineering is widely acknowledged as a “hyper-discipline” spanning the fundamental sciences (Physics, Chemistry and Biology) with all of the traditional engineering pursuits (Civil, Electrical, Mechanical, Metallurgical, Nuclear…). A healthy materials engineering program in fapt demands interaction among basic science and technology, all classes of materials, and the intrinsic elements of the field, parochially known as properties, performance, structure (including composition) and synthesis (including processing). Advanced characterization techniques are obviously critical to this integration, and new imaging technologies have accelerated the process of characterizing materials at all relevant length scales, communicating large data sets to practicing engineers, and refining manufacturing methods with image-based technologies. The importance of imaging technologies was forecast by the National Research Council in a highly regarded 1989 report “Material Science & Engineering for the 1990’s: Maintaining Competitiveness in the Age of Materials,” which included prominent mention of all microscopy methods. Since then, the success and challenges associated with imaging technologies have increased dramatically.In the biomaterials field, which is projected to be a $5 billion dollar industry before the year 2000, imaging technologies are most evident. Cross-modal medical imaging (MRI, CAT..) localizes the results of disease or trauma that might be remedied by implantable structures, developed under condition of strict microstructural control, and monitored for degradation products by non-invasive in-situ means. Products include biochemical sensors requiring high spatial resolution characterization of structure and composition, orthopedic prostheses and repairs, sometimes processed to possess pore structures that mimic natural bone, and wound-management devices, including artificial skin composed of bi-layer silicone elastomers and glycosaminoglycan interspersed with collagen. The last of these is especially dependent upon microstructural characterization. Implantable materials systems, such as the cochlear implant for hearing restoration (direct stimulation of the auditory nerve), or heart-assist devices (long fatigue life), require some of the highest standards in materials selection, design, and integration, with the added dimension of biocompatibility. In addition, the irradiation sensitivity of many candidate biomaterials requires strict attention to low-dose imaging methods, rapid scan image acquisition, and sometimes extensive image processing to avoid or circumvent artefacts. Forward-looking projects on fully implantable therapeutic “agents” for medicinal delivery or chelation of toxins and viruses will place even more demands upon our ability to image in-situ functionality.

In this thesis, the conventional four-point measurement technique and the van der Pauw (vdP) method are systematically investigated in the presence of non-ideal conditions, namely, non-uniform carrier density distribution and absence of ohmic contacts, which are nonetheless commonly encountered in semiconductor characterizations. Upon understanding the challenges in the conventional methods, novel characterization techniques are developed to address these challenges.

A longitudinal magnetoresistance asymmetry method was developed to study the carrier density non-uniformity in two-dimensional samples. By analyzing the asymmetric longitudinal magnetoresistance under positive and negative B-fields, an analytical model based on a linear density gradient across the sample was deduced to quantitatively describe the asymmetry. Based on the theoretical model, a practical method was described which enabled one to experimentally measure the density gradient within a single sample. The method requires only measurements of longitudinal resistances R _xx and R_yy under both positive and negative B-fields, and equations have been provided to extract both the angle and the magnitude of density gradients from the measured resistances. The method was demonstrated in a GaAs quantum well wafer at cryogenic temperatures and n-GaAs bulk-doped wafer at room temperature. In both systems, the density gradient vectors extracted with our method matched well with the interpolated density gradient vectors estimated from actual density distribution maps as a base comparison set, suggesting that our method can be a universal extension of the vdP method to extract density gradients in various systems. The method also allows one to uncover the true local longitudinal resistivity ρ_xx at the center of the sample, which the conventional vdP method cannot describe in the presence of non-uniform densities. The ability to find ρ_xx makes it possible to study interesting physics in semiconductors such as interaction-induced quantum corrections to resistivity and valley filtering in multi-valley systems.

To extend the vdP method to cases where ohmic contacts are not available, a capacitive contact technique was introduced which sends current and senses voltage capacitively. A capacitive contact is formed between the buried conducting layer and the contact metal which is simply evaporated onto the sample. Systematic studies of four-point measurements with ohmic and/or capacitive contacts were conducted on a test sample and a Hall bar sample to demonstrate the effectiveness of the capacitive contact method. With a pre-defined capacitive scaling factor γ and a measurement frequency band (f_L ∼ f_H), it was shown that capacitive contacts could extract the same four-point resistance as ohmic contacts, establishing the validity of the capacitive contact technique.

Built on the idea of capacitive coupling with capacitive contacts, a contactless electrical characterization probe was proposed. On the probe head, there are two types of metal gates: depletion gates to define a test region and separate the contacts, and capacitive contacts to conduct four-point measurements. To characterize a piece or a region on a wafer hosting a buried conducting layer, one brings the probe onto the sample, conducts the electrical measurements with the capacitive contacts, and removes the probe. The sample remains untouched and can be reused. The contactless probe should provide a fast and nondestructive way of semiconductor characterization.

This thesis covers several different experiments that comprised my graduate career. The main focus of these experiments was the use of carbon as an electronic material and a steady evolution of fabrication recipes that allowed us to perform reliable and consistent measurements. The second chapter describes experiments with carbon nanotubes, where our goal was to produce devices capable of manipulating electronic spin states in order create quantum bits or "qubits." The third chapter covers the development of fabrication recipes with the goal of creating qubits within Si-Ge nanowire, and the bottom-gating approach that was developed. The fourth chapter begins graphene related research, describing one of the simplest uses of graphene as a simple transparent electrode on a SiN micromembrane. The remainder of the thesis describes experiments that develop graphene based optical and infrared detectors, study their characteristics and determine the physics that underlies their detection mechanism. Key in these experiments were the fabrication recipes that had been developed to create carbon nanotube and Si-Ge nanowire devices. Finally, we demonstrate how engineering of the device's thermal characteristics can lead to improved sensitivity and how graphene can be used in novel applications where conventional materials are not suitable.
Physics

In this work we study the metal-insulator transition in vanadium dioxide and samarium nickelate and the application of such transitions in electronic devices. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the Mott metal-insulator transition mechanisms and an overview of the interplay between various degrees of freedom in correlated oxides. The phase transition in vanadium dioxide is presented as an example to emphasize the overarching electron-phonon and electron-electron interaction driven transition mechanisms. In Chapter 2, we describe the growth and structure-functionality relationship of thin film transition metal oxides. Chapter 3 goes on to examine the mechanism of voltage-triggered metal-insulator transition in vanadium dioxide two-terminal threshold switches through dynamic studies. Chapter 4 delves into the mechanism of conductance modulation in electrolyte-gated vanadium dioxide transistors, which reveals the importance of electrochemical effects versus electrostatic effects in these devices. Utilizing the idea of electrochemical doping, we designed and realized a strongly correlated insulating phase in samarium nickel oxide through electron doping with hydrogen and lithium interstitials in Chapter 5. Such techniques can be extended to other materials to achieve reversible and controllable carrier doping with high concentration to study the related physics.
Engineering and Applied Sciences - Applied Physics

In this dissertation, I study the physical behavior of nanoscale magnetic materials and build spin-based transistors that encode information in magnetic domain walls. It can be argued that energy dissipation is the most serious problem in modern electronics, and one that has been resistant to a breakthrough. Wasted heat during computing both wastes energy and hinders further technology scaling. This is an opportunity for physicists and engineers to come up with creative solutions for more energy-efficient computing. I present the device we have designed, called domain wall logic (DW-Logic). Information is stored in the position of a magnetic domain wall in a ferromagnetic wire and read out using a magnetic tunnel junction. This hybrid design uses electrical current as the input and output, keeping the device compatible with charge- based transistors. I build an iterative model to predict both the micromagnetic and circuit behavior of DW- Logic, showing a single device can operate as a universal gate. The model shows we can build complex circuits including an 18-gate Full Adder, and allows us to predict the device switching energy compared to complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) transistors. Comparing 15 nm feature nodes, I find DW-Logic made with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy materials, and utilizing both spin torque transfer and the Spin Hall effect, could operate with 1000× reduced switching energy compared to CMOS. I fabricate DW-Logic device prototypes and show in experiment they can act as AND and NAND gates. I demonstrate that one device can drive two subsequent devices, showing gain, which is a necessary requirement for fanout. I also build a clocked ring oscillator circuit to demonstrate successful bit propagation in a DW-Logic circuit and show that properly scaled devices can have improved operation. Through building the devices, I develop a novel fabrication method for patterning sub-25 nm magnetic wires with very low (~ 2 nm) average edge roughness. I apply the fabrication method to measuring the Spin Hall angle in epitaxially grown thin films and to studying the repeatability of domain wall motion in narrow wires. I also present a number of modeling results, including the effect of edge roughness on both magnetic tunnel junctions and domain walls.
Physics

The power conversion efficiency of organic thin film solar cells must be improved before they can become commercially competitive alternatives to silicon-based photovoltaics. Exciton diffusion and charge carrier migration in organic films are strongly influenced by film morphology, which can be controlled by the substrate temperature during film growth. Zinc-phthalocyaninelbuckminsterfullerene bilayer film devices are fabricated with substrate temperatures between 25°C and 224°C and their solar cell performance is investigated here. The device open-circuit voltage, efficiency, and fill factor all exhibit peaks when films are grown at temperatures between 160°C and 180°C, which is likely a result of both the increase in shunt resistance and reduction in undesirable back diode effects which occur between l00°C and 180°C. The device performance can also be attributed to changes in the film crystallite size, roughness, and abundance of pinholes, as well as the occurrence of crystalline phase transitions which occur in both zinc-phthalocyanine and buckminsterfullerene between 150°C and 200°C. The unusually high open-circuit voltage (1.2 V), low short-circuit current density (0.03 mA/cm²), and low device efficiency (0.04%) reported here are reminiscent of single layer phthalocyanine-based Schottky solar cells, which suggests that pinholes in bilayer film devices can effectively lead to the formation of Schottky diodes.

Widely tunable lasers with fast tuning speeds have applications in dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM), optical sensing and optical packet switching. In DWDM, tunable lasers can greatly reduce inventory costs, increase manufacturing efficiency, and increase flexibility. For this application, tunable lasers must meet stringent requirements in terms of linewidth, SMSR, RIN, etc. As coherent detection moves to higher modulation formats to increase spectral efficiency, linewidths on the order of 100 kHz will be required. In FMCW LIDAR, the sensing range is directly coupled to the coherence length, i.e. linewidth, of the laser, and the resolution is determined by the tuning range of the laser. A laser with a 40 nm tuning range and 100 kHz linewidth can lead to a LIDAR system with 30 µm of resolution at a 1.5 km range. The above motivations demonstrate the need for a laser that is widely tunable, with tuning speeds in the nanosecond regime, a 100 kHz linewidth and small form factor. Many different approaches have been taken to achieve a low linewidth laser, generally with the trade-off of slower tuning speeds or larger size. Typically, the widely tunable mirrors used to create a highly agile laser are noisy. In our approach we use negative feedback along with an InGaAsP/InP photonic integrated circuit (PIC) to reduce the linewidth of a widely tunable SG-DBR laser. The SG-DBR laser has a 40 nm tuning range, ns tuning speeds and is 1.5 mm long. Typically the linewidth is in the MHz range due to carrier induced frequency fluctuations. We use an asymmetric Mach Zehnder integrated on the same PIC to monitor and convert the laser frequency fluctuations to amplitude fluctuations. This error signal is fed back through a stabilizing loop filter to the phase tuning section of the SG-DBR laser to reduce the laser linewidth. Through integration of all the optical components, the loop delay is minimized and loop bandwidths upwards of 600 MHz have been achieved. Using this technique, we demonstrate an SG-DBR laser with the linewidth suppressed from 19 MHz to 150 kHz, which is the lowest linewidth yet for an SG-DBR laser.

Several different glass materials were investigated for waveguide amplifier and laser applications, and the potential to realize practical devices with these materials were examined using waveguides fabricated by ion exchange processes. Channel waveguides in an erbium doped phosphate laser glass were fabricated by a dry silver-film ion exchange technique, and the effects of high Er³⁺ concentration were investigated in terms of Er³⁺ ion interactions and energy transfer from Yb³⁺ to Er³⁺. Cooperative upconversion coefficients of the ⁴I₁₃/₂ level,7.7±0.7x 10⁻¹⁹ cm³/sec and 9.3±0.7x10⁻¹⁹ cm³/sec, were obtained experimentally for Er³⁺ concentration of 1x10²⁰ cm³ in the bulk and waveguide samples, respectively. These values are one order of magnitude smaller than the ones reported for silica glass. The increase in the cooperative upconversion coefficient with the increase in Er³⁺ concentration was found to be small. The effects of cooperative upconversion on the gain performance were analyzed for different Er³⁺ concentrations using a theoretical model which adopted experimentally obtained parameters. Given the small cooperative upconversion coefficients in this glass, Er³⁺ concentrations potentially as high as 3.7x10²⁰ cm⁻³ were shown to be feasible by the modeling. This would result in a 12 dB gain with a 4 cm long waveguide for 150 mW pump power at 1.48 μm. The transfer efficiency from Yb3+ to Er³⁺ was found to be 95% or higher for samples with Er³⁺ concentrations of 1.9x10²⁰ cm⁻³, and 24x10²⁰ cm⁻³, even when the ratio of the concentrations, Yb/Er, is only about 1.2 and 2. Planar channel waveguides of rare-earth doped fluoride glass were demonstrated with single mode excitation and propagation loss below 3 dB/cm. The waveguide core was fabricated by Ag⁺-Na⁺ molten salt ion exchange process in a borosilicate glass (BGG31), and a Nd³⁺-doped ZBLAN glass was used as a cladding. A 0.45 dB signal amplification at 1.064 μm was observed in the fabricated 1cm long waveguide, and a 0.9 dB amplification is expected at the emission peak (1.049 μm). Modeling results suggest that 2.5 dB/cm is possible by improving surface flatness of the ZBLAN glass.

Stochastic hydrogeology is the study of hydrogeology using physical and probabilistic concepts. It is an applied science because it is oriented toward applications. Its goal is to develop tools for analyzing measurements and observations taken over a sample region in space, and extract information which can then be used for evaluating and modeling the properties of physical processes taking place in this domain, and make risk-qualified predictions of their outcome. By invoking probabilistic concepts to deal with problems of physics, stochastic hydrogeology joins a well-established tradition followed in mining (Matheron, 1965; David, 1977; Journel and Huijbregts, 1978), turbulence (Kolmogorov, 1941; Batchelor, 1949), acoustics (Tatarski, 1961), atmospheric science (Lumley and Panofsky, 1964), composite materials and electrical engineering (Beran, 1968; Batchelor, 1974), and of course statistical mechanics. Stochastic hydrogeology broadens the scope of the deterministic approach to hydrogeology by considering the last as an end member to a wide spectrum of states of knowledge, stretching from deterministic knowledge at one end all the way to maximum uncertainty at the other, with a continuum of states, representing varying degrees of uncertainty in the hydrogeological processes, in between. It provides a formalism for addressing this continuum of states systematically. The departure from the confines of determinism is an important and intuitively appealing paradigm shift, representing the maturing of hydrogeology from an exploratory into an applied discipline. Deterministic knowledge of a site’s hydrogeology is a state we rarely, if ever, find ourselves in, although from a fundamental point of view there is no inherent element of chance in the hydrogeological processes. For example, we know that mass conservation is a deterministic concept, and we are also confident that Darcy’s law works under conditions which are fairly well understood. However, the application of these principles involves a fair amount of conjecture and speculation, and hence when dealing with real-life applications, determinism exists only in the fact that uncertainty and ambiguity are unavoidable, and might as well be studied and understood. The other end of the spectrum is where uncertainty is the largest. Generally speaking, two types of uncertainty exist: intrinsic variability and epistemic uncertainty.

This chapter encompasses the gradual requirements, basic working principle, inbuilt physics, structural and functional characteristics, and applications of nanowires, especially that of semiconductor nanowires in depth. Today, research and development in material science and electronics going hand in hand have opened up numerous directions for the exploration and utilization of several unique semiconducting materials in the design of novel field-effect-transistors (FETs) in the nano-scale architecture. The performance results of the basic NWFETs structures and hetero-structures along with methods to organize nanowires in the form of arrays to fulfill the requirement of integration of devices and circuits are described in detail. This chapter would be beneficial for students of undergraduate and postgraduate, researchers, and the industrial peoples as well who are working in the regime of the advancement of semiconductor technology because every aspect of nanowire and NWFETs is discussed here deeply in a single platform.

Abstract In this paper, a model STEM program called Engineering Heroes: Qatar Special Investigators (QSI), aimed to familiarize young students with science and engineering in real life applications, is presented. The program theme is about forensic science and technology, which included science and engineering activities with hands-on projects to challenge students’ science and critical thinking skills. Throughout the program, students learned about forensic science as an application of science, engineering and technology to collect, preserve, and analyze evidence to be used in the course of a legal investigation. Participants learned the history of forensic analysis and how it evolved into today’s specialized career field. Forensic specialists include backgrounds in chemistry, physics, biology, toxicology, chemical and electrical engineering. Topics included in the program were a study of toxicology and chemical analysis, assays to determine drug contents, fingerprint development, environmental contamination, chromatography in forgery, presumptive vs. confirmatory testing, scanning electron microscopy, infrared analysis, and evidence handling techniques. The details of the program are presented, including the contents, preparation, materials used, case studies, and final crime scene investigation, which featured the learning outcomes.

Over the last 50 years, solid state physics and technology have blossomed through the application of modern quantum mechanics to the real world. The intimate relationship between basic research and application has been highlighted ever since the invention of the transistor in 1947, the laser in 1958 and the subsequent spawning of the computer and communications revolution which has so changed our lives. The awarding of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics to Alferov, Kroemer and Kilby is another important recognition of the unique interplay between basic science and technology. Such advances and discoveries were made in major industrial research laboratories — Bell Labs, IBM, RCA and others. Today many of these industrial laboratories are in decline due to changes in the regulatory environment and global economic competition. In this talk I will examine some of the frontiers in technology and emerging policy issues. My talk will be colored by my own experiences at Bell Labs and subsequently at a major U.S. national laboratory (Sandia) and at universities (University of California at Santa Barbara and Harvard). I will draw on experiences from my role as the Chair of the National Research Council (NRC) panel on the Future of Condensed Matter and Materials Physics (1999) and as a reviewer of the 2001 NRC report, Physics in a New Era. The growth rates of silicon and optical technologies will ultimately flatten as physical and economic limits are reached. If history is any guide, entirely new technologies will be created. Current research in nanoscience and nanotechnology is already leading to new relationships between fields as diverse as chemistry, biology, applied physics, electrical and mechanical engineering. Materials science is becoming even more interdisciplinary than in the past. Different fields of engineering are coming together. The interfaces between engineering and biology are emerging as another frontier. I will spend some time in exploring the frontier where quantum mechanics intersects the real world and the special role played by designer materials and new imaging tools to explore this emerging frontier. To position ourselves for the future, we therefore must find new ways of breaking disciplinary boundaries in academia. The focus provided by applications and the role of interdisciplinary research centers will be examined. Strangely, the reductionist approach inherent in nanoscience must be connected with the world of complex systems. Integrative approaches to science and technology will become more the norm in fields such as systems biology, soft condensed matter and other complex systems. Just like in nature, can we learn to adapt some of the great successes of industrial research laboratories to a university setting? I will take examples from materials science to delineate the roles of different entities so that a true pluralistic approach for science and technology can be facilitated to create the next revolution in our field.