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I cordially invite you to come to Maui, HI, and participate in the IEEE-NANO 2001 conference to be held 28Ð30 October, at the Outrigger Wailea Resort. This is the first IEEE conference on nanotechnology, sponsored by the IEEE Nanotechnology Committee and by four cosponsoring societies: Robotics and Automation Society (RAS), Electron Devices Society (EDS), Industrial Electronics Society (IES), and Circuits and Systems Society (CASS). This first IEEE Nanotechnology Conference promises to be quite an exciting event, featuring plenary speaker Richard Smalley from Rice University, 1996 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry for the discovery of fullerenes. Other plenary speakers include Phaedon Avouris from IBM, Stella Pang from University of Michigan, and Chun-Yen Chang from National Chiao-Tung University.
Nanotechnology deals with the ability to work at the atomic and molecular levels to create materials and structures with properties that are yet to be known. Chemists and physicists have been fabricating and investigating materials at the atomic level for several decades. An impetus was the lecture in 1959 by Richard Feynman, "There is Plenty of Room at the Bottom." In that lecture, he stipulated there were exciting new discoveries yet to be made if one could fabricate materials and devices at the atomic/molecular scale, but he pointed out that a new class of miniaturized instrumentation was needed to manipulate and characterize the properties of these nanomaterials and nanostructures.
Fortuitously by the 1980s instruments were invented to allow us to visualize and manipulate individual atoms one at a time, including scanning tunneling microscopes, atomic force microscopes, scanning probe microscopes, and others. Together with these new tools, advances in lithographic techniques also allowed us to manufacture nanoscale structures, including e-beam machines and nanoimprinters. Then there was the tremendous expansion of computational capabilities, enabled by advances in VLSI technology, which allowed us to model and simulate materials and their behavior at the nanoscale. Then there was the discovery of carbon fullerenes and nanotubes. The convergence of these scientific advances has led many scientists and engineers to believe that nanotechnology is on the verge of a new industrial revolution.
Those of you who work in VLSI electronics are familiar with the continued downscaling of the FET in CMOS. There is no doubt that today's state-of-the-art technology at 0.035-µm channel length will continue to shrink further. However, it is no secret that most engineers agree that the devices will face the limits of physics when the dimension reaches 0.010 µm, or 10 nm. On top of that the gate oxide continues to be thinner and thinner, in proportion to device shrinking, to a little over ten angstroms. For VLSI technology to continue its growth path, there is no question that we will need advances in nanotechnology, including nanolithography, nanoimprint, nanomaterials, nanostructures, and other fabrication techniques.
The IEEE-NANO 2001 is a three-day conference featuring two parallel sessions each day and covering all aspects of nanotechnology. There are sessions on nanodevices, quantum dots, and nanoelectronic circuits and architectures. There are sessions on nanocrystalline materials, nanomaterial fabrication and characterization. There are sessions on nanomagnetics, nanostructures, and nanorobotics. Then there are sessions on tools for manipulating atoms one at a time, such as atomic force microscopy.
The venue for the conference is the Outrigger Wailea Resort Hotel in Maui, HI. Maui is well known for its scenic beauty and the world-famous beaches, as well as the world's largest dormant volcano, the Haleakala. The Outrigger is enclosed in 22 oceanfront tropical acres and has just gone through a $25 million renovation. It has five freshwater outdoor swimming pools, and is adjacent to three superb golf courses. The end of October, as any other time of the year, is an excellent time to visit Maui and Hawaii. So come one and come all to the first IEEE conference on nanotechnology. For registration and other information on IEEE-NANO 2001, please visit the website at http://www.mein.nagoya-u.ac.jp/IEEE-NANO.
Clifford Lau
Corporate Programs ONR
Arlington, VA