Nanoelectronics and nanoengineering – the new frontier for education and careers – Times of India

Prof. Shanti Nair, Dean of Nanosciences, Amrita Center for Nanosciences & Molecular Medicine at Kochi campus of the Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham.

Nanoelectronics and nanoengineering represents the heart of the new world of electronics and engineering. Everything is now heading towards greater and greater miniaturization and holding more information in smaller and smaller devices. Something smaller than the size of your finger can now hold terabytes of information using spintronics. As devices become smaller and newer principles are employed, such as spintronics, we continue to faithfully follow Moores law which states that the number of transistors on a chip will double every two years. Combine nanodevices with rapid miniaturized sensors and we now have extraordinarily rapid systems for monitoring health, environment and the status of critical engineering systems with very high sensitivity and speed. In automobiles today nanoelectronics are seen in supercapacitors, sensors, transducers and solar cells. Future cars are expected to contain a latticework of billions of tiny programmable sensors to control power output, prevent accidents and so on.

The global nanotech market is 80 billion US dollars and expected to reach $150 billion in this decade. Indian market is smaller but has already topped 1 billion dollars and is one of the fastest growing markets given the large investments in manufacturing being made in India to take advantage of more and more highly trained manpower. Much of this nanotech market is on advanced materials, electronic systems, data storage, high speed computing, sensors, and energy applications.

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It has now become impossible to disassociate nanotech from more routine electronics. Students need to be trained in how to use nanoscale to huge advantage. The advantage goes to mechanical strength, wear resistance, ballistic transport, powerful low energy systems and highly efficient systems and devices to store and generate energy. The economics of energy use is one of the major aspects of nanodevices. Nanotech-based systems will be used not only in the transport industry, namely, autos, planes and satellites but virtually in any machine. Applications in the defense sector will be phenomenal and already has more than doubled in the last ten years alone. We can call it the Star Defense systems of the 21st century rather than the Star Wars idea floated several decades ago by the USA. Climate change monitoring, resource prospecting using advanced sensors and imaging systems from satellites, self-driving vehicles, intelligent cities, are all not so far in the future and will heavily rely on nanotech to achieve their goals.

Optical technologies are to be synchronized with nanotech and this gives rise to the field of nanophotonics. Basically, nanophotonics is the interaction of nanoscale features with light. Light based communication, and systems to convert tiny lasers to electric signals is being used already. Light is now the preferred medium for communication systems as they can be transported over very large distances without loss and can be efficiently used in devices. However, light is now also being used to develop optical chips and photonic integrated circuits by combining electronics and optical engineering.

Another major area of nano electronics is nano bio electronics. Bio sensors and wearable devices are an exploding market worth about $45 billion globally. India is one of the countries that is rapidly growing in this area giving that India is the pharmaceutical capital of the world and stands to gain the most by distributed and personalized healthcare monitoring without the need for hospital involvement which is expensive for the masses. Diabetes and cardiac care devices are already available. Soon we will have full-fledged devices that monitor not only general health parameters but also non-invasively measure all blood, cardiac and brain parameters, including infections, to avoid the scare of future pandemics. Nano bioelectronics is now emerging as a way to monitor at the cellular level. Work is already ongoing on cellular diagnostics and personalized diagnostics that can detect problems at the cellular level at an early stage. This will require, for example, extremely fine nanowire sensors and field effect transistors to monitor and even treat individual cells, monitor genetic health and other parameters. Wear your doctor on your body and breathe free will be the mantra. Signals can be wirelessly transmitted to specialist centers which can respond rapidly and provide individualized care at the right time.

A student in nanoelectronics need training that will necessarily include advanced characterization and test systems, and also nano fabrication laboratories to train the student on the latest techniques and tools. A strong understanding of nanomaterials and the wide palette of such materials and their mechanical and electronic properties are a must to understand. These include materials made at nanoscale as well as materials that are intrinsically nanoscale, such as graphene, carbon nanotubes, 2D materials, and so on. Each of these intrinsically nanoscale materials have extraordinary electronic properties, including piezo and thermoelectric properties, and lie on the border of the molecular and the nanoscale.

In summary, the 21st century brings to us an exciting new technological world that can substantially change the way we live and work in a positive way. Many new industries utilizing the new technologies are being born even as this is written and will dominate the industrial landscape in the coming decades.

For More details visit: https://www.amrita.edu/nano

Disclaimer: Content Produced by Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham University

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Nanoelectronics and nanoengineering - the new frontier for education and careers - Times of India