Melis A. '08 | August 13, 2005
"The End of SURFing at NIST"
Yesterday, I officially completed the 12-week Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program at the National Institute of Standards of Technology (NIST). I never thought that I would find a place that loves infinite corridors, acronyms, and research as much as MIT, but alas, I did! My research was on Using Optical Tweezers to Create Nanowire Based Devices and I worked in the Manufacturing Engineering Lab.
So, see that picture? Those are zinc oxide nanowires growing on the edge of a silicon chip. My project was to find out how to remove those wires from the chip and then arrange them to create a nanodevice. Exciting, eh? In order to create complex mechanisms like nanorobots and nanocircuits that will revolutionize technology, we must start with the fundamentals and build our way up. The most basic building element is a point-like particle, which has limited possibilities to create sophisticated devices when used alone. However, line-like nanowires are much more versatile and are a fundamental building block of the simple nanoscale world. Nanowires can be used as a mechanical element, like a strut, or as an electrical component, like a conductor, or even as a waveguide to conduct light. We have many different kinds of nanowires available to us, but there are very few tools to directly manipulate and assemble them. One of the few such tools is optical tweezers, which work using the forces of radiation pressure, where radiation pressure is just the momentum imparted to an object from light. Basically, optical tweezers are the tiny functional equivalent of the tractor beams that you’Äôve probably seen in Star Wars and Star Trek. If a small object, in this case on the scale of microns or nanometers rather than meters, is caught in the beam, you can move it around.
Essentially, all summer I tried to get these stubborn nanowires off of their beloved silicon chip and then I'd coax them into a tiny tractor beam so I could arrange them into designs. I ended up proving that you can use optical tweezers to trap a wide range of materials and arrange them into junctions.
If this research sounds interesting and you'd like to get your hands on optical tweezers at MIT, you should check out the Lang Lab in Bioengineering or the Ketterle and Pritchard groups in Physics.
On another note, if you want to learn how to write resumes and cover letters, get interview tips, and learn networking skills, I would encourage you to apply to the F/ASIP program at MIT. The application is due on Aug. 15 (sorry for the short notice, guys!) It's a 6-unit seminar that meets once or twice a month. Best of all, they really help you find a summer internship, which is great for people who want to do research over the summer but want to live at home. I did the program last year and I'm really happy with it.
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Responses To This Entry:
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Hey Melis,
Your research looks pretty awesome.
I missed out on FASIP my freshman year because I missed the deadline, but I encourage people to apply if they want an internship after freshman year.
- Bryan
Posted by: Bryan on August 13, 2005 02:36 PM
yeah, the project looks cool, and congrats that it have finally ended :)
Posted by: Meder on August 16, 2005 04:02 AM
Isn't SURF something offered by Caltech? Coz I saw that term on their website once...
Posted by: Eric on August 16, 2005 07:57 AM
Isn't SURF something offered by Caltech? I once saw it while browsing through their website.
Posted by: Eric on August 16, 2005 07:58 AM
Yea, I think Caltech has a program by the same name, but they're not affiliated with each other.
Posted by: Melis on August 16, 2005 04:12 PM
