NSF Award
9981055
Engineering - Electrical (55)<br/><br/>The role of materials science in our society has grown dramatically in recent years. Since the 1960s, it is in electrical engineering that materials (i.e., solid state) have had their most significant impact. For future engineers, understanding electronic materials is a vital yet difficult undertaking. It entails learning complex new concepts, which should be introduced early in engineering studies through simple, sophisticated, yet well-designed projects and classroom demonstrations. To that end, The Cooper Union is creating an undergraduate Electronic Materials Laboratory portable, modular, and adaptable - to serve as a platform for a new electronic materials curriculum.<br/><br/>Much of the new laboratory's equipment is often found in applied physics laboratories, yet it has clear application to electronic engineering. Equipment includes a thin-film deposition system, sensitive electrical measuring equipment, an optical analysis system, and cryostats. Students will thus be able to fabricate simple solid state devices, such as solar cells, and characterize their behavior together with that of the bulk material over a wide range of temperatures. Cooper Union faculty can then evaluate the role of the instrumentation in relevant new interdisciplinary coursework, and demonstrate applicability at other schools of engineering. The laboratory is an integral part of chemistry and physics courses, thereby reaching every Cooper Union-engineering student.<br/><br/>To accommodate students' varying skill levels and different instructional purposes, the equipment is specially selected for its operation under automatic or manual control. Students are able to experiment freely and complete innovative projects that now only can be discussed. With the new lab, students can explore electrical and optical properties of varied crystalline and non-crystalline electronic materials, including the relationship between temperature and conductivity, and investigate principles of radiative recombination and band structure. The new lab is crucial in preparing students for the next millennium.
