Stimulus-Response in Nanotechnology
by Grant Drenkow
Stimulus and response is common in almost every part of our society. As parents– a bad behavior by your child (stimulus) results in a punishment from you (response). A lowering of interest rates (economic stimulus) generally results in a surge in house sales or consumer spending (economic response). The swallowing of a sleeping pill (stimulus) results in a much needed rest (response). The same holds true for nanotechnology.
This week I want to highlight three examples of a stimulus-response from our collection of nanotechnology measurement examples found on the nanotechnology website. http://nano.tm.agilent.com/index.cgi?CONTENT_ID=1361&User:LANGUAGE=en-US
In electronics, we have the Unversity of Groningen in The Netherlands performing a stimulus-response on an organic field effect transistor (FET). They use a pulse generator to stimulate the FET with an 85V, 10ms pulse and they use a semiconductor analyzer to measure the current/voltage and the capacitance/voltage responses. Their work is published in the February 2005 edition of Nature Materials.
In life science, Pohang University in South Korea is performing a stimulus-response in electrochemistry. They are using a function / arbitrary waveform generator to generate a simulated noise signal and use an oscilloscope to measure the peak current from analytes. Their work is published in the June 2005 edition of Analytical Chemistry.
In materials science, Georgia Tech is using a combination of instruments to characterize the mechanical properties of carbon nanosprings. They use an atomic force microscope (AFM) to stimulate the nanospring and a dynamic signal analyzer (DSA) to capture the deflection signal. They also use a function/arbitrary waveform generator to trigger the DSA with a specfic pulse waveform. Their work is published in the February 2004 Nano Letters.
If you have an application that you would like us to highlight on the nanotechnology website, send me an email at grant_drenkow@agilent.com
