Scope
Motivation
Since the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) in 1981 by Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer (Nobel Prize in Physics 1986) scanning probe microscopy (SPM) techniques have dazzled scientist and engineers in nearly every field from natural sciences to liberal arts, and nucleated the new discipline of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. The birth of such a highly interdisciplinary field is an attest to the changing times in a world that moves from educating specialists to generalists. The true power of SPM techniques, which assisted in removing boundaries between disciplines, lays in its simplicity to provide access to the nanoworld in terms of visualization and manipulation. Hence, it is only perceivable that SPM offers an outstanding educational tool for schools.
Objective
The overarching objective of the NUE UNIQUE Program is to develop a nationally replicable model of a sustainable and up-to-date undergraduate teaching laboratory of scanning probe methods applied to nanosciences and nanotechnology. To this end, a partnership between researchers and educators at the University of Washington (UW) and the North Seattle Community College (NSCC), and two companies - Nanosurf, AG (Liestal, Switzerland) and nanoScience Instruments (Phoenix, AZ) has been forged within this partnership a new paradigm of initiating, operating and maintaining a SPM laboratory will be developed and tested that provides a truly hands-on experience in a classroom laboratory setting for a small number of students per instrument involving a variety of SPM techniques and nanoscience/engineering topics.
Preface
This first workshop organized within the boundaries of this paradigm of initiating, operating and maintaining a SPM laboratory serves a class of 16 undergraduate students of diverse academic background with a one-week hands-on experience in small groups of 4 students per instrument. The students gain experience in a variety of different areas from nanolithography, photovoltaics, contact mechanics, polymer relaxation, Van der Waals and capillary forces to quantum mechanical properties.
René M. Overney, Director
NUE UNIQUE
University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195
June 25, 2007