From nanoscience through electronics to information technology
Nanoscience and nanotechnologies have the potential to revolutionise society through step changes in electronic materials, computing, optics and the use of physical and chemical understanding to create innovative self-assembled systems. Already today the dimensions of electronic device components and elements of data storage and processing are in the nanoscale realm, e.g., high end processors have line widths of 45 nm with data bits stored on 2500 nm2 (50 x 50 nm). Further miniaturization, as well as the reduction in the demand for materials, power consumption, and life-cycle costs requires an interdisciplinary understanding of the fundamental properties and processes, as well as developing new technologies. These new demands will be addressed by NOWNANO-DTC where the students will acquire expertise in design, fabrication, measurement, modelling and theoretical understanding of matter at the nanoscale. In particular, they will learn nanofabrication techniques, as well as new soft matter approaches, and develop hybrid structures based on combinations of traditional and new materials such as graphene, nanoparticles and molecular systems. These will be complemented by development of theoretical models which will then be used to describe the physics of carrier dynamics and other properties of nano-scale devices, e.g., devices operating at THz frequencies, opto-electronic and spintronic devices, hardware for quantum information processing and many others.