Research Facilities

The department has extensive research facilities for all areas of active research. In addition to computing facilities individually operated by each research group, the department administers a network of high-end UNIX workstations and PCs, which are upgraded regularly. These facilities are used for classroom instruction as well as the individual needs of the students. For integrated circuits and systems research, a network of workstations is maintained with VLSI CAD software that includes Mentor Graphics, Hspice, Xilinx placement and routing tools, and Tanner. VLSI test facilities include data acquisition and RF and mixed-signal test and measurement instruments for integrated circuit characterization. Communications and signal-processing laboratories are maintained for data compression, error control coding, array signal processing, mobile communications, and biomedical signal processing research activities. Remote sensing and applied electromagnetics. Research facilities include active and passive remote sensing facility, an optical polarimetric scatterometer, an atomic force/scanning tunneling microscope facility, a mcicrowave anechoic chamber facility. Electrooptics research focuses on femtosecond laser communications and sensor development using nanoparticles, and optical diagnostics and spectroscopy equipment. The solid states laboratories have a full array of material processing and device fabrication facilities along with specialized equipment for measurement, allowing research on thin-film deposition and characterization, ellipsometry for in situ monitoring of growth processes, plasma etching and the study of breakdown phenomena, and diamond film growth at low temperatures.

Other available equipment includes X-ray, TEM and fine-line lithography, electron beam and X-ray direct-write facilities, and cryogenic measurement and magnetooptical measurement equipment, ultrahigh vacuum sputter and e-beam deposition systems, an Auger spectrometer, and scanning electron microscopes. Nanostructures research includes facilities for the study of self-assembly of quantum dots and wires, their properties in cryogenic, noise-isolated environments, and the creation of nanostructures.

Research Groups

• Center for Materials Research and Analysis
  
• ElectroOptics, Remote Sensing, Applied Electromagnetics, Nanotechnology and Analysis
  
• Mobile Communications and Coding Laboratory

Research Spin-offs

• Interactive Information R&D
  
• J. A. Woollam Co.