Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

The achievements of present day electronics are staggering. However, current technology is focused on increasingly complex manipulations of materials that have largely been stagnant for decades. As researchers strive to find the cornerstones of future innovation, it is natural to adopt new approaches that rely on a richer palate of materials that include the integration of nanoscale design. Implicit in pursuing the next generation of electronics is the ability to actually fabricate devices. Presently at the University of Victoria, there are little or no means to deposit metals for electrical contacts or dielectric materials for optical structures and gate materials in transistors. The lack of a versatile deposition system precludes or extensively hampers the research of at least a dozen faculty members and their students from many technologically innovative projects in a range of disciplines that include Chemistry, Physics, Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering. Funding this proposal will support projects that range from fundamental electrical characterization of new materials to microfluidic cancer sensors to the exploration of new optical phenomena in metal nanostructures.