Re-Inventing the Electronic Materials Laboratory: Hands-on Deposition and Testing of Active Component Materials by Undergraduate Classroom Students

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Engineering - Materials Science (57)The project is developing a new kind of electronics materials laboratory course in which students not only test electronic devices such as transistors, but also build them from their constituent materials. The team includes scientists and educators from Johns Hopkins University (JHU), Drew University, and Lancaster County Day School. Course modules are dealing with the major classes of materials and how to make and process them in ways that are simple enough to transfer to programs with minimal experience with device materials. Modules involve fabrication of electronic materials, processing them into the form in which they would be used as devices, testing the devices, and examining their use in circuits. They are using a combination of cutting-edge and traditional material technologies with only inexpensive, readily accessible equipment. The modules are being tested at JHU, but will also be "field-tested" at Drew University, a four-year institution with neither the extensive scientific infrastructure of JHU nor its base of graduate teaching assistants, and at the Lancaster Country Day School, a K-12 school that cooperates closely with the outreach program of the JHU MRSEC. Field test reports will be circulated widely in the scientific and science education literature. The evaluation effort with collaboration from the university's center for educational resources, is using an analysis of student products, focus groups, participant perception indicator surveys, and direct observations to monitor progress toward the project's outcomes. Broader impacts include the development of a relatively simple, inexpensive approach for an electronic materials laboratory, the dissemination of a laboratory handbook detailing the approach, and the testing at another undergraduate institution and at a high school.