Electronic materials (including thin film metallization, semiconductors, and high temperature superconductors) will continue to play a dominant role in our nation's technological development for the foreseeable future. Dartmouth graduates have played leading roles in these developments in the past. These improvements will ensure our students have the superior training needed to continue to command leadership positions. Measurement of electronic materials will be enhanced first by purchase of an ellipso-meter to characterize thin films fabricated in the materials laboratories. Second, existing capacitance-voltage measurement capability will be upgraded to a cost-effective, state-of-the-art system. Third, development of a new course in optical properties of materials will be enhanced by construction of a photon measurement system with high sensitivity and spectrographic capability. Finally, teaching of the electronic and mechanical properties of materials will be improved by a pilot enhancement to our existing workstation-based computer laboratory, Project NORTHSTAR. A Silicon Graphics workstation will be used to develop pilot software to display the energy band structure or mechanical stress properties of a material, based on a user-supplied solid-state crystal structure and user-selected physical models.
