IRES Track 1: Low-Dimensional Materials for Transducers

大流行造成的全球供应链中断几乎影响了美国及其他地区每个人的日常生活。一个显著的例子是“半导体芯片短缺”。在许多情况下，芯片处理数据并使各种消费产品能够自主操作，而无需直接人为干预。为了提高制造能力和应对当前挑战的能力，在这一技术领域培养具有全球视野和竞争力的下一代工程师势在必行。在这些半导体芯片设备中，将一种能量形式转换为另一种能量形式的设备的集合称为换能器。它们在将物理事件转化为计算机可以处理的电信号方面起着至关重要的作用。该IRES Site项目旨在通过每年6名本科生/研究生在韩国换能器开发中心开展为期三年的国际暑期研究经验。该团队将与来自四所不同大学的六名外国教师导师合作，利用新开发的纳米级材料创新换能器技术。该项目旨在让学生接触到不同文化环境下的全球研究，并为他们提供更广泛的技能，以促进他们的专业发展。他们的能力可以在领导、沟通、自我意识等方面得到培养，以便他们在未来的学术、企业或政府部门的职业生涯中取得成功。该计划的结果将直接影响和推动芯片制造业的劳动力发展。最近探索的低维材料在显著降低的物理尺寸上展示了前所未有的新兴器件应用机会。它们特别有希望用于传感器技术，这些技术得益于其大量的非凡性能，如扩大的表面积，光学/电气可调性以及优越的机械可变形性。这个IRES项目旨在全面研究各种低维材料的结构-性能-工艺关系的基础知识，以探索它们对先进换能器技术的适用性。研究小组将系统地研究按物理维度分类的材料，即零维量子点、一维纳米线、二维石墨烯和过渡金属二硫化物层，以及它们的非均质集成杂化结构。具体来说，该团队将努力揭示这些材料中控制电学和光学特性的潜在物理和化学原理，并研究制造方法，以将它们与目标几何形状组装在一起。所获得的知识将用于开发各种具有非常规功能的传感器设备组件，如机械可拉伸的光学/电子传感器和储能电极。该项目由国际科学与工程办公室（OISE）资助。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The disruptions in a global supply chain created by the pandemic have impacted almost everyone's daily lives in the U. S. and beyond. One notable example is the "semiconductor chip shortage". The chips process data and enable autonomous operations of various consumer products, in many cases, without direct human interventions. In order to enhance the manufacturing capability and capacity to address the current challenges, it is imperative to educate the next generation engineers with the global perspective and competitiveness in this technical domain. Among those semiconductor chip devices, a collection of devices that convert one energy form to another is called transducers. They play a crucial role in translating physical events into electrical signals that computers can process. This IRES Site program aims to provide international summer research experiences by engaging six undergraduate/graduate students each year for three years at the epicenter of transducer development in Korea. The team will work with six foreign faculty mentors at four different universities to innovate transducer technologies by utilizing newly developed nanoscale materials. This program is designed to expose the cohort students to global research in different cultural environments and equip them with a broader range of skills to stimulate their professional development. Their competencies can be nurtured in the area of leadership, communication, self-awareness in order for them to be successful in their future careers in academia, corporate, or government sectors. The outcome of this program will directly impact and advance the workforce development in chip manufacturing.Recently explored low-dimensional materials in significantly reduced physical dimensions have exhibited unprecedented opportunities for emerging device applications. They are particularly promising for transducer technologies which benefit from their large set of extraordinary properties such as enlarged surface area, optical/electrical tunability as well as superior mechanical deformability. This IRES program aims to comprehensively study the fundamentals of structure-property-process relations in a variety of low-dimensional materials toward exploring their suitability for advanced transducer technologies. The research team will systematically investigate the materials classified by their physical dimension – i.e., zero-dimensional quantum dots, one-dimensional nanowires, two-dimensional graphene and transition metal dichalcogenide layers, as well as their heterogeneously-integrated hybrid structures. Specifically, the team will strive to unveil the underlying physical and chemical principles for the controlled manipulation of electrical and optical properties in these materials and investigate manufacturing methodologies to assemble them with targeted geometries. The obtained knowledge will be utilized to develop various transducer device components with unconventional functionalities such as mechanically stretchable optical/electrical sensors and energy storage electrodes. This project is funded by the Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.