ENGRI 1820 - [Electricity Lights Camera Action: Nanoengineering for the Future of Bits and Bytes]

(crosslisted) ECE 1820

Fall, spring. 4 credits. Letter grades only.

A. Lal.

Our society relies on devices that generate, process, and transmit information. In this course, students will fabricate and test hardware devices that are basic building blocks of modern information processing devices, such as a PDA. The students will fabricate devices that represent information and energy using (1) electrons (nano-memory, transistors, neural probes, fuel-cells), (2) photons (light emitting diodes, e-ink, solar-cells), and (3) electro mechanical interfaces (accelerometers, surface-acoustic wave RF filters, piezoelectric power harvester). Intuition for the devices will be motivated by technology limitations, of what can be accomplished with existing devices, versus what we would want the devices to do. These would-be holy-grail capabilities such as brain-like processing power, free energy, telekinesis, and muscle-like robotic actuators. Group problem solving will address potential solutions to current technology limitations. The intent of this course is to better prepare the students to understand the context of higher-level technical courses in electronics, photonic, and mechanical devices.