EECS Area IV Engineering Physics topic: Materials Area IV Engineering Physics: Materials

Research in Materials in Area IV is extremely comprehensive and naturally begins with utilizing a variety of deposition techniques including chemical vapor deposition and hydrothermal deposition, molecular beam deposition and molecular beam epitaxy, and also more typical sputtering techniques, as well as self-assembly methods. Mature material systems used to form complex and advanced device structures are studied based on Si, GaAs, GaSb, InP, SiGe, with growing interest in wide bandgap materials based on GaN. In the case of inorganic III-V compounds, complex heterostructures are designed and grown with alloy layers having mixtures of column III atoms as well as mixtures of column V atoms. Such III-V-based heterostructures also contain quantum wells, quantum dots and quantum dashes for enhanced optical and electronic properties.

Significant effort is devoted to depositing and understanding the physical properties of organic thin films, hybrid organic/inorganic structures, polymer solids and self-assembled materials. Presently active organic layers have thickness on the nanoscale, but research emphasis is to reduce the size to that of a single molecule. Novel synthesis techniques are developed to form carbon nanotubes, fullerenes and semiconductor nanowires, and recent work is devoted to forming graphene sheets of carbon that are a single atom thick. Superconducting materials and structures are investigated to exploit their quantum-mechanical properties for electronics. In all of the material-oriented research, opportunities for developing electronic, photonic and optoelectronic devices with enhanced performance is the goal. Devices include LEDs and lasers, photodetectors and transistors, solar cells, chemical sensors, isolators, memory cells, micro-electromechanical and micro-fluidic devices, as a few examples.

Check MIT's Open Course Ware (OCW) or the MIT Cataloque for more information on the various subjects that include Materials; a number of relevant undergraduate and graduate subjects in EECS, as well as other courses, are listed below.

Undergraduate Subjects:
6.007 Fall, Spring Applied Electromagnetics: from Motors to Lasers
6.012 Fall, Spring Microelectronic Devices and Circuits
6.152J Fall, Spring Micro/Nanoscale Processing Technology
6.161J Fall Modern Optics Project Laboratory (meets with 6.637)
6.602 Spring Fundamentals of Photonics
6.701 Spring Introduction to Nanoelectronics (meets with 6.719)
3.091 Fall, Spring Introduction to Solid-State Chemistry

First Year and Introductory Graduate Subjects:
6.621 Spring Fundamentals of Photonics (meets with 6.602)
6.634J Spring Nonlinear Optics
6.637 Fall Mdern Optics Project Laboratory (meets with 6.161)
6.641 Spring Electromagnetics Fields, Forces and Motion
6.719 Spring Nanoelectronics (meets with 6.701)
6.720J Spring Integrated Microelectronic Devices
6.732 Fall, alt even yrs Physics of Solids
6.763 Fall, alt oddyrs Applied Superconductivity
6.772 Spring, alt odd yrs Compound Semiconductor and Heterostructure Devices

More Advanced Graduate Subjects:
6.729 Fall Molecular Electronics
6.731 Fall, alt even yrs Semiconductor Optoelectronics: Theory and Design
6.774 Fall Physics of Microfabrication: Front End Processing
6.777J Spring Design and Fabrication of MEMS
6.778J Spring Materials and Processes for Microelectromechanical Devices and Systems
6.781J Spring Nanostructure Fabrication
6.789 Fall, alt odd yrs Organic Optoelectronics
8.511 Fall Theory of Solids I
8.512 Spring Theory of Solids II


The following seminars cover material relevant to the topic of Materials in Area IV Engineering Physics:

Microsystems Technology Laboratory VLSI Seminar
Tuesdays, 4pm, room 34-101

Optics and Quantum Electronics Seminar
Wednesdays, 11am, room 36-428 (RLE Haus Room)

Micro/Nan-Technology Seminar Series
Thursdays at 3pm, RLE Conference Center, room 36-462/428

Center for Integrated Photonic Systems (CIPS) Brown Bag Seminar Series
Thursdays at 12 noon, room, 36-428 (RLE Haus Room)

NanoStructures Lab (NSL) Group Meeting
Fridays, 3pm, room 36-428 (RLE Haus Room)

The following laboratories contribute to materials synthesis and characterization:

Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL)
Nanostructures Laboratory (NSL)
Nanoprecision Deposition Laboratory (NDL)
Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (ISN)
Laboratory of Organic Optics and Electronics (LOOE)
Center for Materials Science and Engineering (CMSE)