This award is part of Nanoscale Science and Engineering initiative, NSF 02-148, and is supported by the ENG/EEC division (program director Dr. Mary Poats) and the Design Automation for Micro and Nano Systems Program in the CCR division (program director Dr. Sankar Basu) of the CISE directorate. The NUE award supports new facilities for a freshman course to motivate students to pursue careers in nanotechnology. In this two-term course, undergraduate students obtain hands-on experience in the fabrication and characterization of semiconductor, microfluidic and microelectromechanical devices. Students will learn how to fabricate, measure, and understand the operation and integration of basic solid state semiconductor circuit elements such as diodes and transistors in the first term. In the second term, students build and test their own microfluidic and micro-electromechanical devices such as micro-electromechanical microphones, micro-fluorescently activated cell sorters, and other micro-sensors. These tasks require high resolution lithography equipment as well as imaging techniques which will be acquired through this NSF award. This course will allow undergraduate students, and in particular freshmen interested in nanotechnology, to train on state of the art lithography equipment during the class, and later pursue diversified interdisciplinary research topics during the summer. Much of the instructional material developed under this program will be made available on the internet for use by other colleges and universities and by incorporation into the NSDL.
