Bedri A. Cetiner - US grants

The objective of this proposal is to acquire a mask aligner for photolithography (from mm to 0.6 micrometer scale) and a nanometer pattern generation system to be attached to the existing SEM for sub-100 nm e-beam lithography (EBL). Microfabrication, originally developed for silicon-devices and integrated circuits, has become an essential technology to explore properties of new materials, such as graphene and metamaterials, and create devices with novel functionalities, such as sensors and nano/microelectrical-mechanical-systems (N/MEMS).

Intellectual Merit
Combined with the existing equipment at Utah State University?s Nanoscale Device Laboratory (NDL), these two additions will enable, for the first time at USU, the characterization of new materials and the creation of novel devices for a number of cross-disciplinary research projects. Once the equipment is set up and capabilities are highlighted from these currently underway projects, it is expected that more researchers will use NDL to explore the unlimited world of micro/nanoscale devices.

Broader Impacts
Acquiring the requested system will be a significant research infrastructure improvement for USU and will undoubtedly help USU to recruit faculty and students interested in nanoscale science and engineering. Students, including underrepresented groups, working at NDL will receive invaluable training in the basics of microfabrication allowing them to carry out research more efficiently at national nanofabrication facilities. NDL has been involved in open-house and class-demonstrations, and further activities involving microfabrication are planned. More industrial partnerships will be actively pursued at NDL not only to commercialize successful prototypes but to stimulate research focusing on the needs of society.

The radio spectrum is becoming an increasingly valuable natural resource nowadays, while it has been shown that much of the spectrum is underutilized in existing licensed bands. To enhance spectrum utilization, dynamic spectrum access (DSA) has been envisioned as a set of promising new spectrum management paradigms, such as spectrum trading/auction and opportunistic spectrum access. While DSA and programmable cognitive radios enable a much higher flexibility of spectrum access, due to the openness of wireless medium, it is also susceptible to various forms of misuse or abuse. For example, unauthorized transmissions without a valid license, or secondary transmissions that intentionally disobey the interference constraints set by the primary users (radios). The misusers will not only gain higher throughput for themselves, but also harm the efficiency of spectrum access operations of normal users (radios). Therefore, enforcing spectrum access rules or etiquettes is crucial to ensuring the ultimate success of the DSA paradigm.

This project develops a framework for etiquette and rule enforcing in dynamic spectrum sharing environments. The main idea of the proposed research is to engage community users (radios) to detect misuse, and identify and punish unruly devices. By crowdsourcing the tasks of monitoring neighborhood radio access behaviors to many cognitive radio devices, multiple benefits can be gained: 1) the potentially large number of participating devices can result in much larger detection coverage and accuracy; 2) no pervasive dedicated trusted infrastructure or hardware is needed; and 3) the fact that every device could possibly be a monitoring device leads to a much stronger deterrence to misbehaviors. The interdisciplinary research plan consists of four major components: 1) an optimized crowdsourced passive radio traffic monitoring framework to detect access misbehavior in the vast DSA spectrum; 2) techniques to identify misbehaving cognitive radio devices using physical layer identification, even when the signal waveform can be adaptively modified; 3) techniques for immediate punishment of spectrum misuse through adaptive friendly jamming which exploits multi-functional re-configurable antennas; and 4) incentive mechanism design via auctions to ensure user participation in each task of crowdsourced etiquette enforcement. The success of this project will benefit multiple current and future application domains deploying DSA, especially those that require critical information protection, such as healthcare, transportation, energy, public services, emergency, and military services.

Thin films of various metallic and insulating materials of a few-nanometer thick are widely used in devices and sensors. At present, Utah State University (USU), a land-grant university of more than 28,000 students, has no thin film deposition system that can perform a uniform thin-film deposition across a 4-in wafer. The fact that the existing small evaporator can only deposit low-melting point metals, such as aluminum and gold, severely limits the research capability at Utah State University. This proposal is to acquire an advanced sputtering deposition system which will provide crucial improvements include: (1) substrate holder for a 4-in wafer, (2) substrate heater up to 800 °C, (3) sufficient power to sputter high-melting point metals, magnetic materials, and dielectric materials, and (4) a load-lock to improve through-put and film quality.

The proposed sputtering deposition system will enable a broad range of funded transformative research at USU including: (1) carbon-nanotube-based radiometer for unprecedented accuracy on measuring radiation for monitoring global warming and calibrate laser power. (2) Depositing catalytic nano-particles on patterned carbon-nanotube sidewalls for CO2 capture to help mitigate climate changes and conversion to useful chemicals such as methanol. (3) Depositing dielectrics and growing graphene patterns for the fabrication of intelligent antennas for next generation of cognitive wireless communication. (4) Fabricating titanium oxide nano-structures to investigate cell behavior affected by nanotopography. (5) Depositing thin film of cobalt and phosphorous to enhance electrocatalytic water splitting for high-energy-density chemical fuels. (6) Depositing nickel and alumina thin films to investigate nanoparticles self-assembled by solid-liquid interface instability for optoelectronics and magnetic data storage. (7) Depositing various oxide and carbide thin films to investigate electrical charging, deposition and electron transport in multi-layered samples to mitigate electrostatic discharge damage to spacecraft and power grid. More innovative research will be supported since the tool is only limited by the targets available from suppliers around the globe.

The broader impacts of this tool should be assessed by the synergy with other tools at NDL as a whole. The proposed sputter coater will be integrated into NDL which has been serving the research needs of faculty from at least 5 departments in Colleges of Engineering and Science. Approximate 30 graduate and undergraduate students from the 6 profiled major research groups are expected to be trained and using this tool with other tools at NDL for their research. This tool is also planned to be involved in the capstone and senior research projects (~20 students/yr) in 4 engineering classes and a laboratory module for two microfabrication classes (~30 student/yr). In addition to offering advanced training for university students, NDL participates in many activities organized by various units of USU for disseminating new science and technology to the general public. The expanded research capability brought by the proposed tool will also help academia-industry partnership such as the existing SBIR and STTR programs with Box Elder Innovations, LAM Research, Ball aerospace, and Orbital Sciences, among others.