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CUE 2007
DARPA Grant Establishes New Nanotechnology Research Center

Professor Y. C. Lee of mechanical engineering directs the Nanomaterials Characterization Facility as well as the DARPA focus center, which will be a major user of the facility.

A new research center focused on the controlled synthesis of nanostructures and their reliable integration into micro- and nano-electromechanical systems has been established in the Department of Mechanical Engineering with a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The DARPA Focus Center on Nanoscale Science and Technology for Integrated Micro/Nano-Electromechanical Transducers (iMINT) has secured $1.53 million for its first-year research expenditures through the DARPA grant, industrial sponsorships, and matching support from CU-Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Industrial sponsors include GE, Ibiden USA, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and WiSpry.

The center will manage more than 20 cutting-edge research projects involving faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers from CU-Boulder, NIST, Northwestern Univer-sity, and Columbia University. Research expenditures are expected to grow annually and total more than $10 million over six years.

Professor and Director Y.C. Lee says the center will play an important role in enabling nanotechnology to achieve broad technological impact: "We expect that integrated micro- and nano-electromechanical systems will rival and perhaps even surpass the impact of integrated circuits."

So far, most nano-electromechanical systems being developed in research laboratories around the world have been single-unit demonstrations and cannot be manufactured reliably on a large scale, according to Lee. To fully integrate nanotechnology into commercial products such as cell phones and automobiles, and in defense applications, the center will focus on achieving a more complete understanding of the science and technology of carbon nanotubes and various nanowires for reliable design, fabrication, assembly, and packaging.

"Nanotubes and nanowires have highly coupled mechanical, electrical, optical, and chemical behavior that depends on their structures and environmental and loading conditions," says Lee. "As part of our research, we will be developing a universal testing platform to measure these characteristics. Based on the understanding, we will synthesize repeatable, predictable, and reliable integrated micro/nanosystems."

Nanotubes and nanowires are the building blocks of nano-electromechanical systems and have shown superior performance on a scale 100 times smaller than micro-electromechanical systems.