NDSI 2003                                 Miami, Florida - February 15-19, 2004

The 1st IEEE Conference on Nanoscale Devices and System Integration took place in Miami, Florida, on February 15-19, 2004. The focus of the conference was “real-life” devices and systems, which recently emerged as a result of various nanotechnology initiatives in chemistry and chemical engineering, physics, electrical engineering, materials science and engineering, biomedical engineering, computer science, robotics, etc. The conference had a single session all-invited speaker format with the presenters making the “Who’s Who in Nanotechnology” list. Contributed work was showcased at a special poster session. The conference was co-organized by the teams of the Center for Nanoscale Magnetic Devices (CNMD) of Florida International University (FIU) and the Center for Nanomagnetic Systems (CNS) of University of Houston. The conference had more than 160 participants from Japan, South Korea, China, Singapore, India, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Italy, Switzerland, Russia, England, and the United States. To strengthen the connection between fundamental research and real-life applications, this conference had a large number of presenters both from academia and industry. Among industry giants presenting their latest research accomplishments in the field were NEC, IBM, Toshiba, AMD, Samsung, Seagate, Veeco, and others.

Nanotechnology triggered a new wave of research collaborations between researchers from academia and industry with a broad range of specializations. Such a global approach resulted in a number of breakthrough accomplishments. A highlight of the conference was a protein-based memory device capable of recording information with an areal density above 10 terabit/in2 was demonstrated at the conference for the first time. This technology was developed jointly by researchers at FIU, the University of Houston, and Harvard. The protein based media used in this demonstration was genetically engineered in the research group of Prof. Venkatesan Renugopalakrishnan of FIU and Harvard.

To highlight a special role of magnetic applications in nanotechnology, a separate session was dedicated to extensive discussion of nanoscale magnetic devices. Notably, magnetic technologies pioneered the transition to nanoscale with the current state-of-the-art demonstrations in the range of 60nm x 60nm characteristic cell size, rapidly scaling to sub-10nm domain. Leading industry (Seagate, Motorola, and others) and academia (University of Chicago – Illinois, University of South Florida, and others) representatives presented their latest results in areas of magnetic recording, magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM), Nanoscale magnetic metrology, and others.

As a tribute to the role of carbon nanotube (CNT) in Nanotechnology, the first technical session was dedicated to CNT-based devices and applications. This session was opened by a review of the latest accomplishments in the field by Meyya Meyyappan, director of NASA Ames Research Center for Nanotechnology. In this session, Dr. Phaedon Avouris, manager of the Nanoscale Science and Technology group at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, demonstrated CNT-based transistors with superior electronic properties.Dr. Jun’ichi Sone of NEC Corporation, Japan, presented the industry perspective on the latest CNT device development.

The CNT session was followed by quantum computing, nanophotonics, nanoelectronics, and nanomagnetics. As an important accomplishment in an emerging field of quantum computing, three-dimensional (3D) self-consistent simulation of spin-qubit quantum dots and circuits was demonstrated by Prof. J.-P. LeBurton of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A groundbreaking result in a field of nanophotonics was demonstrated by Prof. Michal Lipson of Cornell University. Lipson showed how the light can be controlled in a Nanoscale device. Dr. Dieter Weller of Seagate Research presented the most up-to-date account of nanomagnetic developments within magnetic data storage community including self-organized magnetic arrays and heat-assisted magnetic recording. Prof. Vitor Baranauskas of Universidad Estadual de Campinas, Brazil, demonstrated high performance nanoscale field emission devices made based on diamond-like materials.

Several presentations were dedicated to such essential areas as nanoscale fabrication, metrology, and characterization. The sessions were opened by Prof. Stephen Y. Chou of Princeton University who talked about nanoimprint lithography as an enabling engine for Nanotechnology. Prof. Rod Ruoff of Northwestern University demonstrated scanning probe microscopy with CNT-based superior tips. Prof. Jack Wolfe of University of Houston presented groundbreaking results on high-density sub-4nm device fabrication using atom-beam array lithography.

One entire day (February 18th) of the conference was dedicated to molecular electronics, nanoscale biology and bioengineering. Prof. Gary Bernstein of the University of Notre Dame opened this day with his talk on nanolithography for molecular electronics. Prof. H. Mizuseki of Tohoku University talked about the feasibility of single-molecule electronic devices. Actual Nanoscale molecular electronic devices such as transistors and diodes were demonstrated by Prof. David Janes of Purdue University, Prof. Vivek Subramanian of Berkeley University, Prof. Douglas Natelson of Rice University, and others. In the same session, Prof. Henry Hess of the University of Washington showed how naturally occurring biological motors could be utilized as components in nanoscale electronic devices. Prof. Gleb Finkelstein of Duke University and Prof. R. Rinaldi of Leece University, Italy, presented their successful experimental results on the DNA-based periodic self-assemblies, which could be used to build future electronic devices. Finally, Dr. C.-K. Loong of Argonne National Laboratory demonstrated how proteins and other biological nanotechnology-related materials could be characterized using advanced neutron scattering techniques. Among other results for the first time shown at the conference, Prof. George Whitesides of Harvard University illustrated how biological organisms can generate magnetic fields and gradients necessary for future electronic devices.

One entire session was dedicated to next generation devices that rely on nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS). Dr. E. Eleftheriou of IBM Zurich Research Center showed pioneering results on how NEMS-based storage devices could be controlled to accommodate terabytes of data. Dr. T. Lebrun of National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) proposed an optical manipulation of nanocomponents necessary to assemble nanoscale devices.

During the final evening, there was a special panel session “Research and Funding in Nanotechnology” jointly held by IEEE and funding agencies such as National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, and Semiconductor Research Center (SRC). Dr. Rajinder Khosla of NSF, Dr. Lalita Manchanda of SRC, and Edward Rashba of IEEE answered many questions from the audience on the latest research directions and opportunities and future standard regulations in Nanotechnology.

The conference was sponsored by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and US Air Force. NDSI’04 was endorsed by Materials Research Society (MRS). Prof. Osama Mohammed (FIU, chair of Miami section of IEEE) extended invaluable support on behalf the Miami Section of IEEE.

Selected papers presented at the conference are to be published in the special October (NDSI-2004) issue of Nanotechnology of the Institute of Physics (IOP). With an undisputable success of the 1st conference, it has been decided to hold the NDSI conference annually. The next NDSI conference is planned to be organized in Houston, Texas, U.S.A. in 2005.