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| Nanotechnology and Materials Characterization - The Machine Shop of the 21st Century |
As
our society moves away from the Industrial Revolution and into the Information
Age, science is increasingly moving to the molecular level. Much as industry and
information are dependent upon state-of-the-art equipment, so is the Machine Shop
of the 21st Century. New technological advances in instrumentation often fuel
major scientific discoveries. While UCSD's facility will not build industrial
tools as we commonly think of them today, it will have the capabilities to construct
ultra-small or "nanosized" materials at the atomic level. As the ability
to create and use these materials accelerates, the increasing need for a facility
to design, fabricate, and test nanostructural materials and elements becomes crucial.
Modern techniques using microscopic machines have created new research programs
that involve structures with dimensions only a few times larger than atoms. The
immediate applications range from the design of new pharmaceuticals, biomaterials,
electronic, computer and sensor devices, spacecraft components, and structural
materials. But the actual breadth of the applications cannot now be fully imagined.
The depth of world-class research in materials science, chemistry, physics, and
biology makes UCSD and ideal site for such a facility.
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