Vision
The Network for Computational Nanotechnology seeks to bring a new perspective to engineering education to meet the challenges and opportunities of modern nanotechnology. Fifty years ago our field faced a similar challenge brought on by the advent of the solid-state transistor and it was met effectively by the Semiconductor Electronics Education Committee (SEEC), a group of 30 leaders in the field from both industry and academia who produced seven undergraduate textbooks and four films that reshaped the teaching of electronics and trained a generation of engineers ready to lead the modern electronics industry.
Today we face the need for a comparable revolution in engineering education. Ever since the birth of solid state physics, materials have been described in terms of average material parameters like the mobility or the optical absorption coefficient which are then used as inputs to macroscopic device models. This two-step approach is being widely used even for modern nanostructured materials, but we believe that it is no longer adequate to meet the challenges and opportunities of our day. An integrated approach is needed that embeds new ways of thinking, emerging from current research on nanoscience, directly into the models used for non-equilibrium problems like nanoscale transistors, energy conversion devices and bio-sensors. The objective of this bottom-up initiative is to establish and disseminate the fundamentals of this novel viewpoint through a carefully coordinated collection of seminars, short courses and full-semester courses.
“Electronics from the Bottom-up” is designed to be a resource for educators and self-learners and a model for a new way of teaching electronic devices that we hope will inspire students and prepare them to contribute to the development of nanoelectronic technology in the 21st Century. This project, launched in fall, 2006, is producing a set of educational resources that are being disseminated at summer schools, lectures, and on nanoHUB.org.
This project is supported by the Intel Foundation and the NSF-funded Network for Computational Nanotechnology
The Concept
- Presentation: An Introduction to Electronics from the Bottom Up, Mark Lundstrum, Supriyo Datta, Ashraf Alam
Online Video – Voiced Powerpoint - Companion Presentation: Bottom-up view of conductance, Supriyo Datta
Online Video – Voiced Powerpoint - Companion Presentation: Top-down/Bottom-up Views of Length, Ashraf Alam
Online Video – Voiced Powerpoint - Whitepaper
Summer Schools
- 2009 NCN@Purdue Summer School
- Reliability Physics of Nanoelectronic Devices, by M. A. Alam.
- Colloquium on Graphene Physics and Devices by S. Datta, M. Lundstrom and J. Appenzeller.
Short Courses
- Nanoelectronics and the Meaning of Resistance, Supriyo Datta, Summer 2008
- Physics of Nanoscale MOSFETs, Mark Lundstrom, Summer 2008
- Percolation Theory, M. Ashraf Alam, Fall 2008
- Concepts of Quantum Transport, Supriyo Datta, 2006
Full Semester Courses
- Fundamentals of Nanoelectronics, Supriyo Datta, Fall 2008, Fall 2004
- Atom to Transistor, Supriyo Datta
Seminars
- McCoy Lecture: Nanodevices and Maxwell's Demon, Supriyo Datta
- PASI Lecture: Nanodevices and Maxwell's Demon, Part 1, Supriyo Datta
- PASI Lecture: Nanodevices and Maxwell's Demon, Part 2, Supriyo Datta
- HCIS-15 Lecture: Nanodevices and Maxwell’s Demon, Supriyo Datta
- Physics of Nanoscale Transistors: An Introduction to Electronics from the Bottom Up, Mark Lundstrom
- The Long and Short of Pick-up Stick Transistors: A Promising Technology for Nano- and Macro-Electronics, Ashraf Alam
- Geometry of Diffusion and the Performance Limits of Nanobiosensors, Ashraf Alam, Pradeep Nair
Related Resources
- Nanoscale Transistors, Mark Lundstrom, Fall 2008, Fall 2006
Those with comments or questions or who are interested in participating in this initiative should contact Mark Lundstrom.
Supported by the Intel Foundation and the NSF-funded Network for Computational Nanotechnology