It's widely predicted that future electronics will largely depend on something
really small -- nanomaterials used for building nanoelectronics. A key component
of these tiny circuits is stable nanowires that work reliably for a decade or
more. Currently, however, nanowires often fail after anywhere from a few days
to a few months, due to prolonged electrical stressing.
Carmen Lilley, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering
at the University of Illinois
at Chicago, is working on new procedures for making nanowires more electrically
stable -- and hence more reliable. She was recently awarded a $505,532 National
Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Award to help advance her project.
"My idea is to look at the physics of failure," she said. "How
do these systems fail when stressed electrically? If we can develop a basic
understanding of the mechanisms that control failure and a way to model these
mechanisms, we can create material designs with predictable behavior."
Lilley's research focuses on studying properties of single crystals of common
conductor metals such as gold, silver, copper, nickel and iron, and their unusual
behavior characteristics at the nanoscale.
"At these smaller scales, the electrical resistivity of the structure
changes," she said. "Single crystalline materials are of interest
because we can use them to control the material uncertainties that influence
typical experiments such as isolating electrical resistivity measurements from
grain boundary effects, surface contaminant and roughness effects. What is the
basic electrical resistivity at different sizes within the nanoscale?"
Lilley's goal is to create a basic design scheme to build stable nanowires
for any application. For future highly integrated circuits and nanoelectronics,
nanowires are the "essential building block," she said. "But
to be successful, they must be stable, and that's a considerable challenge."
Lilley plans to use part of her grant to continue an ongoing effort to attract
underrepresented minorities to engineering careers. One effort is the launch
of a graduate mentoring program called "Preparing for Academic Careers
in Engineering," or PACE. This program is sponsored by Women in Science
and Engineering, the UIC College of Engineering and the department of mechanical
and industrial engineering.
She also hopes to give undergraduate assistants more hands-on laboratory experience,
and to bring students from Chicago Public Schools to UIC to see work in the
lab and view some of the breathtaking images produced by instruments such as
scanning electron microscopes.
"These beautiful images often have artwork properties. For the visiting
kids, it can spark an interest."
NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development award is its most prestigious
honor given to junior faculty members in the sciences and engineering who have
shown a demonstrated commitment to research and engineering. Lilley's award
is funded under the federal government's economic stimulus plan, the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
Posted September 17th, 2009
