Cornell Nanofabrication Lab director praises the unit's research diversity

By David Brand

National users of Cornell Nanofabrication Facility (CNF) continue to provide "a balanced representation" of research across the major disciplines, from biology to physics, reported director Sandip Tiwari last Thursday at the facility's annual meeting at the Statler Hotel.

Users doing research in electronics and MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) now account for 36 percent of research carried out at the facility (20 percent electronics, 16 percent MEMS), and 25 percent of users are doing research in biology and chemistry (18 percent biology, 7 percent chemistry). Materials research accounts for 17 percent of research. "We are proud of the diversity and balance of strength that these numbers indicate," Tiwari said.

Even with the slower increase in some research fields, the number of new researchers and students remains consistent, Tiwari said. "CNF and the National Nanofabrication Users Network (NNUN) continue to aid Cornell's -- and the nation's -- remarkable success in the forefront of nanoscience and nanotechnology." CNF is one of two principal centers (the other is at Stanford University) in the five-site, university-based NNUN. Tiwari also is the director of NNUN, which is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Gina Weibel, right, fourth-year grad student in materials science and engineering, discusses her poster on "Cleaner Microelectric Patterning" with fifth-year grad student Andrea M.P. Turner during a poster session at the CNF annual meeting Sept. 20 in the Statler Ballroom foyer. Richard Killen/University Photography

The Cornell facility is a national research and instructional center for the application of synthetic nanostructures in a broad range of disciplines, including uses in biological and medical sciences, materials research, physics and chemistry, as well as engineering applications in microelectronics and optics.

User growth at CNF has risen by 20 to 30 percent in the past few years. In fiscal 2000, said Tiwari, 237 new users were trained at CNF, and about 400 new users will be trained this year. Each week, he noted, the facility sees between four and 10 new users, the number limited either by staff or instruments available.

The usage this summer was "significantly heavier" than last summer, he said. And in the past six months, there has been about an 80 percent growth in industrial users.

Indeed, Tiwari said, the facility has been so in demand that "we have filled in short-term gaps by retaining experienced graduate students on a part-time basis to act as project hosts." Such moves, he said, are "crucial to maintaining our momentum" during CNF's move in 2003 into Duffield Hall, the nanotechnology research building now being constructed on the Engineering Quad.

In sessions throughout the day, graduate students working with faculty associated with CNF presented their finding on several new discoveries and technology developed at CNF over the past year. The subjects presented included "separating biomolecules in microfluidic devices," "elastic properties of defects in nanometer-scale thin films," "three-dimensional electronic integration in silicon" and "single-molecule, single-electron transistors." The students also presented their work at a poster session. On Friday, Sept. 21, a career fair was held at the Statler Hotel.

The meeting's keynote speaker was Mildred Dresselhaus, institute professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who during the 1950s spent two years at Cornell as an NSF postdoctoral fellow. "Soon, all U.S. microchips will be nanoscale devices," she predicted. (She identified "nanostructures" as being 30 nanometers or less -- a nanometer being equal to the width of three silicon atoms.) Already, she noted, nanowires are being produced that are just two atoms thick and about one atom in height.

Carbon wires just 1 nanometer thick, called nanotubes, "will have miraculous properties never dreamed of before," Dresselhaus said. Companies such as Samsung, she said, are researching the use of these nanotubes in field emitters for flat displays.