Distinguished Electrical Engineering Colloquium: Nanostructure Engineering — A Path to Breakthrough Discovery, Innovation, and Commercialization Across Broad Fields

Abstract

Nanostructures underpin modern technologies across a broad spectrum of fields — semiconductor ICs and AI hardware, photonics, biomedicine, and energy, to name a few — and will continue to drive the breakthroughs to come. This is for two reasons: (1) smaller devices are faster, more energy-efficient, denser, and cheaper; and (2) when a device structure is scaled below a fundamental length scale of its field (such scales abound in each field — e.g., the electron mean free path, the wavelength of light, or the DNA persistence length), conventional theory may no longer apply, and new properties and phenomena emerge — opening the door to new discoveries, new inventions, new products, and entirely new fields. All of this, however, hinges on our nanofabrication capabilities. Drawing on the author’s own research, the talk will illustrate how exploiting new length scales has led to inventions in nanoelectronics, nanophotonics, nanomagnetics, and nanobiotech, and will present the invention and applications of nanoimprint — a transformative nanomanufacturing technology that has enabled the multibillion-dollar commercialization of products no other patterning method can produce with the required resolution, fidelity, 3D structures, materials, area, throughput, and cost.

Bio

Dr. Stephen Y. Chou is the Joseph C. Elgin Professor of Engineering at Princeton University and a serial entrepreneur — founder of Nanonex, NanoOpto, and Essenlix, and co-founder of BioNano Genomics. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Packard Fellow, a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, IEEE, and Optica, and a recipient of the IEEE Cledo Brunetti and Nanotechnology Pioneer Awards. Over four decades, his field-creating contributions span nanofabrication; electrical, optical, magnetic, and biological nanodevices; and medical diagnostics. Through unconventional scientific vision and by scaling structures beyond classical limits, he has uncovered transformative nanoscale phenomena, invented a broad range of nanofabrication technologies and nanodevices based on new working principles, and opened new fields. His best-known inventions and contributions include nanoimprint lithography — now the basis of a multibillion-dollar industry — the gate-all-around (GAA) transistor, subwavelength optics (meta-optics), the nanochannel DNA analyzer, and the iMOST platform. MIT Technology Review named two of his technologies among the “Ten Emerging Technologies That Will Change the World.” He has authored 700+ journal and conference papers and is the primary inventor on 400+ patents/applications. Collectively, his work has produced profound and enduring worldwide scientific, technological, industrial, economic, and societal impact.