 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
         |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| navigate: home: magazine: spring 2001: article | |
|
Nanotechnology takes giant steps at Penn State By Karen Wing | |||||||
|
If you occasionally feel like your cell phone is weighing you down, consider this: if that same cell phone were made with 40-year-old technology, it would be the size of the World Trade Center. The reason for this vast reduction in size is the transistor. Once visible to the human eye, transistors are now the size of viruses, and the millions needed to operate a cell phone can be packed tightly enough to fit in the palm of your hand. The fact is, it is not the transistors that limit the size of your cell phone anymore; it is the keyboard. The field that is creating the virus-size machines and structures that are being used in communications, information technology, optics, biotechnology and pharmacology is nanotechnology, and many believe that when it is in full swing, its impact will be the biggest thing since the industrial revolution of the 1740s. Dr. Stephen J. Fonash, Kunkle Chair in Engineering Sciences at Penn State, is at the forefront of this revolution, and he’s helping bring it to educators, researchers and students across the state and nation through the Penn State Nanofabrication Facility. “The impact is incredible,” Fonash said. “It goes well beyond the ability to make smaller cell phones. We can use that same technology to make everything from hollow needles that will replace the stainless steel needles used in doctors’ offices to scaffolds for growing human tissue. Right now in labs, they’re developing man-made capillary systems so that in 30 to 40 years, you’ll be able to grow a new liver from healthy cells taken from a diseased liver. All these advances have been driven by consumers wanting faster computers with more memory. That consumer need led to smaller transistors and ultimately to where we are now — able to routinely make things that are the size of DNA and viruses.” These types of advances require highly specialized machines that operate in extremely clean environments, such as the Class 10 labs found in the Penn State Nanofabrication Facility. “Class 10” means the facility is 10,000 times cleaner than the average hospital operating room. “This is a world-class university facility,” Fonash said. “There’s no other university facility of its kind in Pennsylvania, and it’s one of the best in the nation.” As director of this $23 million, fully equipped facility, Fonash has worked to develop two unique programs that provide unprecedented access to the facility: the National Nanofabrication Users Network (NNUN), which works with researchers nationwide, and the Nanofabrication Manufacturing Technology (NMT) Program, which is designed to develop a highly trained, high-tech workforce in Pennsylvania. Penn State joined the National Nanofabrication Users Network, comprised of Penn State, Cornell University, Howard University, Stanford University and the University of California at Santa Barbara, in 1994 as a result of winning a National Science Foundation (NSF) competition. The Penn State Nanofabrication Facility is one of the four sites in the NNUN, which offer all types of nanofabrication. The mandate of the NNUN and the mission of the Penn State Nanofabrication Facility (the Nanofab) are to make these technologies available to researchers in universities and companies across the country. Penn State’s facility (the Nanofab) has done this through a number of channels including its Web site at www.nanofab.psu.edu. At this site, visitors can learn about Nanofab education and research programs, equipment, staff, events and facility access, as well as take a virtual tour of the facility. The Nanofab is very valuable to large high-tech companies, because it allows them to explore and test new technologies without shutting down their production lines. It is equally valuable to small and start-up companies that could not afford its facilities and equipment but need them to compete and even survive. The Nanofab also enables researchers at other colleges and universities to share the Penn State Nanofabrication Facility’s multimillion-dollar equipment base, professional engineering staff and processing expertise. These are resources that would be cost prohibitive to duplicate and sustain across the country. So far, this resource sharing and networking system created by NSF has worked brilliantly. “We have 200 different users a year here at Penn State Nanofab,” Fonash said. “Researchers have come from Columbia University, Carnegie Mellon, UCLA, TriQuint and many other places. It’s a very dynamic environment.” Researchers have the option of actually doing the research themselves on site, or they can ask one of the facility’s professional engineering staff to do the processing for them. Andrzej Mieckowski, a graduate of the Penn State Engineering Sciences Program and a process engineer at the Nanofabrication Facility, is one of the engineers who work with the visitors. “I might train them on the machines, do their experiments or take care of the machines they use. It’s a very unique set-up.” The interaction in the lab between these researchers, the professional engineering staff that runs the Penn State Nanofabrication Facility and undergraduate and graduate students has a multitude of benefits. “There’s a beehive of ideas going back and forth. The students can help teach the visitors and vice versa,” Fonash said. “Plus, it’s one thing to have a world-class facility and another for the world to know about it. When people see what we have available at Penn State, it adds to the stature of the entire University.” It also occasionally leads to job opportunities through the personal connections made in the lab. And jobs in the hot nanotechnology field are the focus of another innovative program Fonash has developed. That educational effort at the Nanofab is the Nanofabrication Manufacturing Technology (NMT) Program, which is the first of its kind in the country. This program is a partnership involving the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the 15 two-year degree colleges in the state, the 14 universities of the State System of Higher Education and Penn State. The key element of the NMT Program is the sharing of the Penn State Nanofabrication Facility by these educational institutions across the state. In the case of the two-year degree colleges, participating students attend their “home college” for three semesters and spend a semester at University Park for the six NMT capstone experience courses. These courses are taught for the two-year colleges and belong to those schools. Students use these courses to earn an NMT associate degree or NMT certificate from their “home college.” The same resource-sharing approach is used in four-year degree State System of Higher Education NMT programs. Participating students also spend a semester at University Park for the six capstone experience courses. Again, these courses are taught for and belong to those schools and, as determined by each institution, are used in their individual degree or NMT certificate programs. Terry Kuzma, a senior process engineer and education administrator for the Nanofabrication Facility, has worked with industry leaders to design the curriculum, labs and lectures to prepare the students for careers in nanotechnology. “They get to actually learn 12 different processing systems used in micro- and nanotechnology, as well as getting industrial experience in our clean rooms. That’s extremely important for safety and process integration,” Kuzma said. “The students have courses in the morning and in the afternoon, they have labs,” Mieckowski said. “In the beginning, they get trained on all of the machines, and the rest of the time they spend working on projects in which they’ll learn the process of building a particular devise.” “The students are able to take their past experiences and couple them with materials and processing knowledge which enables them to become specialists,” Kuzma said. “I believe this resource-sharing approach is a very innovative way to generate a new pool of people for the high-tech workforce,” Fonash said. “By adding a certificate in NMT to a four-year biology or chemistry degree, people are now able to enter the engineering job market in areas such as biotechnology or chemical nanofabrication. Associate degree graduates get initial offers of $36,000 to $52,000, occasionally with signing bonuses. Ph.D.s can start at over $90,000. “The NMT program offered by the Pennsylvania two-year degree colleges is an alternate path to higher education,” he added. “Students can leave a two-year program like this and go right to work in high-paying jobs for industry. Then companies will often pay for the students to finish a baccalaureate degree in marketing, management or engineering.” Bill Jacobs of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., went through the six capstone experience courses in the fall through his “home college” of Luzerne County Community College. He enrolled after working for 14 years in industry as an electronics technician. “I saw Steve Fonash giving a speech about the program and did some investigating. It looked exciting, and I saw there were a lot of job opportunities.” Jacobs will complete his degree this spring at Luzerne County Community College. He has already had a number of offers, and companies are still calling. “The reality was that with this program you could get in fairly quickly,” he said. “I’ve had actual offers from four companies, and I have four tentative interviews scheduled for May when I graduate. I definitely want to stay in Pennsylvania, and there are a couple of good opportunities practically right in my backyard.” Based on anecdotal evidence, the students are exceptionally well prepared. “Last semester, the students told me no one missed an interview question, and some of the questions were very in-depth. It’s really rewarding working here. It makes you feel good when you go home at night,” Kuzma said. Pennsylvania has a vested interest in the success of this program, because a highly skilled workforce will make Pennsylvania more attractive to high-tech companies. Of course, other states have similar ideas about the opportunities provided by nanotechnology. California has committed $200 million to developing nanotechnology, New York has dedicated $75 million to the State University of New York, and Ohio has agreed to provide $25 million to support the Ohio State University’s efforts. “The competition is severe,” Fonash said. “But Pennsylvania, with the Nanofabrication Manufacturing Technology partnership, is ahead of the pack, so now everybody’s racing to catch up.” As the race continues, Fonash and the Penn State Nanofabrication Facility will be striving to not just keep up, but to stay ahead, and this dedication to excellence will benefit students, Pennsylvania and researchers across the country. | ||||||
| |||||||
