8/27/2010

INSIDE THE STATE, INSIDE TECHNOLOGY: Jana Zaumseil – shedding light on the future of nanotechnologies and microelectronics

A very young discipline. A very young professor. A very big prize. The young discipline: nanotechnologies. This science of matter in the nanometer (one billionth of one meter) scale coalesced in the mid-80s. Over the last decade, the nanotechnologies have yielded a cornucopia of revolutionary products. The young professor: Jana Zaumseil. Born in 1977, and already the possessor of an impressive vita fi lled with research scholarships and awards, she is a professor at the University of Erlangen’s Institute of Polymer Materials.

The very big: the Alfried Krupp Prize for Support of Research. Forty-four of Germany’s leading young professors competed for it and for its endowment of one million euros, to be dispensed over the next five years. The winner was Zaumseil.

The reason why Zaumseil won is the importance of her work, which promises to advance communicating and computing by removing a major barrier: the physical limits placed upon the downscaling of silicon-based transistors.

These, in turn, are the components of the chips forming the hearts (and brains) of our electronic devices. Their downscaling has given the chips the increases in output and sophistication and decreases in size enabling today’s mobile communication.

Set to replace silicon in transistors are CNTs. As their name suggests, these “carbon nanotubes” are formed by rolling and joining a sheet comprised of individual carbon atoms.

For the last 25 years, CNTs have been hailed as the NBT (next big thing). And that’s due to the very many exciting properties possessed by the tubes.

The reason why our computers are, however, still using silicon-based transistors instead of CNTs is that the tubes have an input/output problem. It takes a large amount of time and energy to nanoengineer the CNTs, whose output (in terms of information stored and released or light processed and emitted) has proven neither spectacular nor reliable.

Enter Zaumseil. Her objectives are to alleviate these problems and, by doing such, create the next generation of optoelectronic and microelectronic components. Her particular focus is developing CNTs to the point where they can effectively detect and emit infrared light, which, in turn, is the workhorse of a wide range of imaging, tracking, analysis and short-range communication systems.

Path-blazing though it is, Zaumseil’s work is just one of the 55 projects being undertaken by the University of Erlangen’s EAM (“Engineering of Advanced Materials”) cluster of excellence. The cluster has set itself the objective of producing the advanced materials stimulating revolutionary breakthroughs in ICT, chemical engineering, energy and transportation.

Source: Invest in Bavaria, Business Bavaria newsletter, Issue 8 2010

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