A team of three Brown professors of engineering and physics and researchers from three other institutions were awarded a $4-million grant from the Department of Defense to conduct research into the action of atomic-level materials that may someday make using the Internet faster.
The group will conduct basic research that might benefit the military as well as civilians, according to Arto Nurmikko, lead investigator and director of Brown's Center for Advanced Materials Research. The grant is being made under the DOD Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative program, a program designed to address large multidisciplinary topics - in this case requiring the skills of researchers in materials science, physics and engineering.
Nurmikko's team members from Brown are Humphrey Maris, professor of physics, and Alex Zaslavsky, associate professor, electrical engineering. The Brown researchers will cooperate with scientists from SUNY-Stony Brook, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Houston.
"There is an intense pressure to make the Internet faster," Nurmikko said. A critical element is the creation of fast electrical devices and optical switches that would be able to respond in a millionth of a blink of an eye.
The challenge facing Nurmikko's group is how to enhance the movement of electrons, which act like sprinters. Particles called phonons act like hurdles that slow the electrons. Nurmikko's team will try to create a way to make phonons spring the electrons forward. Their project is called "Phonon Enhancement of Optoelectronic and Electronic Devices."
Nurmikko believes his group won the grant because of the particularly strong scientific expertise in this field among the team of researchers. The Center for Advanced Materials Research at Brown, which will coordinate the project, is an independent academic unit that makes it possible to work on projects across departmental and institutional lines. The center also provides multimillion-dollar facilities for use by researchers and students in engineering and the physical sciences.
Work on the project will begin in May and include several doctoral students, Nurmikko said.
Other partners in the research are IBM, Lucent Technologies and Hewlett-Packard. Nurmikko said the companies provide the rewarding and challenging scientific problem for the university researchers who have the tools and techniques to find answers and create devices.
The DOD announced the 20 awards on Feb. 4. The grants were given to 17 academic institutions to conduct multidisciplinary research in 13 topic areas of basic science and engineering. The awards provide long-term support for research, graduate students, and the purchase of equipment supporting specific science and engineering research.
The competition drew 171 white papers. Sixty-three projects were asked for full proposals, and technical expert teams chose 20 proposals for funding.