"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)"
Project Summary
A Nanonics scanning probe microscopy (NSPM) system will be acquired for investigating and manipulating nanoscale systems. The system is extremely flexible, allowing the simultaneous use of several probes anywhere on a sample, including optical, electrical, AFM, dip-pen/nanopipette, tweezers and heaters.
Intellectual Merits - Nanoscale devices, materials and systems are yielding exciting discoveries and solving the most challenging problems. To develop and understand these devices an instrument that can probe and modify the nanoscale characteristics of these devices is required. This is especially the case as nanosystems and devices become more and more complex - integrating, optical, electronic, and chemical responses and functionalities. At RIT the NSPM will directly benefit several of these research areas, including nanophotonics, plasmonics, biological MEMS, lithography, batteries, photovoltaics and nanomaterials.
Broader Impacts - The acquisition of the NSPM instrument will enable a multitude of experiments and discoveries that will have a significant impact on several fields, such as, computing, telecommunications, biosciences, lithography and power. The tool will be incorporated into already existing courses in the Microsystems Engineering and Microelectronics program and a course will be developed specifically for the tool where students fabricate nanodevices and test them. In addition, the instrument and the research enabled by it will have an impact on the local community through already established K-12 outreach programs, to the local Optical Society of America and IEEE chapters and to members of New York States photonics industry.
