Nano-Technology Product-Realization Road Map Workshop; University of Maryland, College Park

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University of Maryland, in partnership with various academic institutions and industry, will organize a workshop to identify the fundamental research needed for realizing nano-technology products. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has also expressed interest in participating in the planning and conduct of this workshop. The findings of this workshop will be useful for developing a Nano-technology Product Realization Road Map, which will enable the community to bridge the gap between nano- science concepts in the laboratory and viable nano-technology products for sustainable and affordable commerce. Product development requires not just novel nano-science concepts (which are receiving extensive attention across many research centers), but equally importantly, enabling disciplines and relevant infrastructure. Examples of enabling disciplines include modeling and simulation approaches needed for design automation of nano-engineered products, scaling of synthesis and fabrications methods needed for large-scale nano-manufacturing processes, and metrology needed for nano- scale characterization. While these disciplines are well developed for conventional technologies, the unique needs of nano-technology can only be addressed through fundamental new advances and new infrastructure. Workshop participants will include mechanical, systems, industrial, chemical, materials and electrical engineers involved in all of the above aspects of nano-technology. Several recent nano-technology workshops have identified the urgent need for broad-based pervasive research programs that address the infrastructure needed for nano-engineered product realization. The consensus in all of these workshops was that rapid developments in the nano-scale sciences has spurred significant interest in bringing nano- engineered products to the marketplace, but that the enabling technologies and relevant infrastructure needed to bring the nano-product concepts to fruition are sorely lacking. Robust design tools built on clear understanding of material behavior and failure physics are essential if the nano-technology industry is to become a large-scale commercial reality. So are quality, consistency, and reproducibility in high-volume manufacturing process. The third critical engineering enabler is nano-scale metrology for characterization of materials, processes, and products. Together, these three enablers will form the critical infrastructural tripod necessary to achieve and sustain affordable nano- technology commerce. The intellectual merit of this proposed workshop rests in the new research roadmap that will be developed for fundamental research in each of these three enabling disciplines. The broader impact will be realized from the integration of these roadmaps to benefit nano-technology, and the resulting educational roadmap that will be developed in the proposed workshop. The workshop is scheduled for late fall of 2003, after the ASME IMECE conference in Washington DC. The workshop will be hosted at the University of Maryland. Sessions on nano-scale design methodologies, nano-manufacturing processes, and nano-metrology will be organized and facilitated by academic, industrial and government collaborators in this workshop, potentially including NIST.