News
Physics in the City of Angels
by Sharon C. Glotzer
pdf version of this article
The American Physical Society’s
(APS’s) 2005 March meeting in Los Angeles March 20–25
will feature several thousand reports of cutting-edge science and
technology and celebrate the World Year of Physics 2005, an international
salute to the discipline that coincides with the centennial celebration
of arguably the most momentous year in physics. In 1905, Albert
Einstein published his pioneering papers in special relativity,
quantum mechanics, and Brownian motion —each a major underpinning
of modern physics.
During the 2005
March meeting, the
APS Forum on Industrial
and Applied Physics
(FIAP) will focus its
annual program contributions
on a range of
interdisciplinary topics
of interest to industrial and applied physicists
and engineers, with a particular emphasis
on technology sectors important to West
Coast companies.
The FIAP program will include nearly
two dozen focus sessions and eight invited
symposia in areas such as nanotechnology,
combinatorial and high-throughput materials,
semiconductors, and hydrogen storage.
Topics will include complex oxides, which
some researchers envision as a replacement
for silicon insulators in transistors,
semiconductor–oxide interfaces, polymer
light-emitting diode (LED) displays, terahertz
devices, organic electronics, photonics
and magnetics, supercritical carbon
dioxide processing for microelectromechanical
devices (MEMs) and microelectronics,
nanoscale semiconductors, hybrid nanoscale
materials, polymer–biopolymer interfaces,
materials characterization in the silicon
industry, self-assembly of materials (see
figure), and inorganic glasses.
Nanotechnology has seen tremendous
activity in the industrial- and applied-physics
communities in recent years. Advances in
synthesis methods, characterization techniques,
and computer simulation are driving
new developments in many sectors. FIAP will
present several focus sessions and symposia
on these developments during the
Los Angeles meeting. The week
will kick off with a tutorial
on computational
nanotechnology, which
will cover the
latest computer
simulation
methods for modeling
nanomaterials,
nanoelectronics,
and processes
at the nanoscale.
Another session
will address challenges
to successful
self-assembly of the
building blocks
needed for nanodevices,
with a particular focus on fabricating
new materials and using anisotropic interactions
achieved by patterning to control
the symmetry of nanoparticles as they
assemble into desired structures for device
applications.
A session on hybrid materials
that consist of organic and inorganic constituents,
and which interact on the molecular
scale, will address the latest advances
in the synthesis, assembly, and applications
of this exciting class of nanomaterials,
which has potential commercial applications
in technologies such as solid state
lighting, optoelectronics, biocompatible
devices, and the packaging of integrated
circuits. Recent work in molecular devices
and sensors will occupy another session,
which will discuss new advances in their
fundamental understanding, materials
development, assembly and fabrication
techniques, and characterization.
FIAP sessions traditionally have emphasized
semiconductor physics and its applications, and the 2005 March meeting will
prove no exception. Advances and novel
developments in the manipulation of atoms
at the interface between oxides and semiconductors
will highlight one focus session.
Presenters at that session will discuss
emerging deposition techniques, improvements
in the design of multifunctional
oxides, the stability of complex oxides
deposited on semiconductors, novel metrology
for characterizing interfacial phenomena,
and first-principle simulations.
Another focus session will concentrate on
the present status and perspective of openframework,
novel electronic materials based
on group IV semiconductors as new tunable
materials. The latest advances in strained-silicon
technology, an innovation in creating
faster transistors at reduced cost, will be
highlighted in another focus session. Yet a
third session will feature recent advances in
materials characterization for the semiconductor
industry, including advances in structural
and physical characterization techniques,
novel applications during different
stages of the technology cycle, and fundamental
physical limitations. The electronic
and atomic structure of interfaces in gate
stacks, an important issue in the further
miniaturization of integrated-circuit devices,
will be addressed in three focus sessions.
Polymer LED (PLED) displays are less
mature than some other display technologies
and have performance issues related to the
physics of semiconductor devices. They also
pose difficult manufacturing challenges.
A
focus session and symposium featuring
Nobel laureate Alan J. Heeger will address the
latest advances in PLEDs. Invited presentations
will provide an overview of polymers for
displays and present research challenges that
physicists must solve to fabricate PLEDs and
enhance their performance. Papers will also
address questions about the physics of electron-
hole capture to produce excitons, and
ways to manufacture reliable PLED displays.
Applications of parallel and high-throughput
experimentation have leaped beyond
screening and discovery tools to provide
important product development assistance.
An array of clever approaches and innovative
technologies is making research in the
physical sciences more productive, rapid,
and thorough. These techniques promise better property
correlation, rapid parameter optimization,
and enhanced model building, while maintaining
quantitative rigor. FIAP will host a
symposium surveying recent advances in parallel
and high-throughput research methods,
including measurement techniques, combinatorial
experiment design, automated analysis,
and informatics modeling, as well as
applications to the development of advanced
nanomaterials and electronic materials, complex
polymers, next-generation sensors,
MEMS devices, and nanometrology.
Inorganic glasses represent one of the
oldest classes of technologically relevant
amorphous materials. Yet, researchers continue
to discover new glass-forming compounds
(such as bulk metallic glasses) and
amorphous semiconductors (chalcogenide
glasses, for example, which have found use
in threshold and memory switching) with
intriguing properties that enable the development
of new technologies. One FIAP
focus session will address the synthesis,
processing, characterization, structure–
property relationships, and fundamental
aspects of glass formation.
The FIAP program includes symposia and
focus sessions on a broad range of other topics.
The complete FIAP program will be available
six weeks before the March meeting at
the APS website. Follow the link to the FIAP
home page or go to the APS 2005 March
meeting page.
Biography
Sharon C. Glotzer, vice chair of the Forum
on Industrial and Applied Physics (FIAP),
is associate professor of chemical engineering,
materials science and engineering,
macromolecular science and engineering,
and physics at the University of Michigan
More information
about FIAP
|
