Nanotechnology and Devices

Nanotechnology of electronic materials involves the construction, measurements, and manipulation of semiconductor devices with dimensions and tolerances on a scale of less than 100 nanometers.

The ability to create electronics at the nanoscale enables not only the active componentry driving our computers and cellphones, but now provides sensors, actuators, computing power, and network connectivity to a wide range of inter-networked physical devices.

Current research to create nanotechnology of electronic materials focuses on topics like “top-down” layer deposition, as well as chemical functionalizing of semiconductor nanostructures and biomimetic creation of electronics by synthetic methods. Tools to measure these nanostructures include atomic force microscopy, scanning tunneling microscopes and X-ray photoemission spectroscopy.

The National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) website states the federal government believes nanotechnology is one of the most important research endeavors for the country. Since the future is integrating technology into society, companies like Intel, Global Foundries, IBM, Texas Instruments, Western Digital, SanDisk, and FEI offer careers suitable to those interested in this realm of research.