"Interfacing biology with microelectronics and nanotechnology."
Robert Hamers, Ph.D.
Irving Shain Professor of Chemistry
University of Wisconsin, Madison
The integration of biological molecules with micro- and nano-electronics is leading to a new field of “bioelectronics”. While the integration of biology and microelectronics has immediate practical applications such as highly parallel, real-time biosensing, there are also broader connections in that biology and microelectronics both are based largely upon the storage and transfer of information. Bioelectronic integration and the conversion of biological information into electrical signals brings with a number of interesting challenges in surface chemistry and materials science, including the use of unique materials such as diamond. Recent advances in the ability to fabricate nanoscale materials such as carbon nanotubes and metallic nanowires present additional opportunities for leveraging these ideas down to the nanoscale. For example, the selective biomolecular recognition properties of biological systems can be used as an aid in the assembly of nanoscale systems and the fabrication of new types of biosensing systems and bioelectronic switches.
In this talk, I will discuss the challenges and opportunities at the intersection of microelectronics, nanotechnology, and biotechnology, as illustrated through new types of bioelectronic systems such as biologically-sensitive transistors and nanowire-based bioelectronic switches.
Professor Hamers is the Irving Shain Professor of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received a B.S. degree in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1980, and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Cornell University in 1985. Professor Hamers then joined the IBM T.J. Watson Research Laboratory in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. as a Visiting Scientist (1985-1986) and then Research Staff Member (1996-1990). At IBM he used scanning tunneling microscopy to perform some of the very earliest atomic-resolution studies of the structure, electronic properties, and chemistry of silicon surfaces. In 1990, he joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His current work at Wisconsin focuses on science at the intersection of microelectronics, nanotechnology, and biotechnology.
Professor Hamers is author of more than 150 scientific publications. He has been recognized by the Institute of Scientific Information as one of the world’s most higly cited scientists in the field of Materials Science and is the recipient of a number of awards include Outstanding Innovation Awards from the IBM Corporation, the Peter Mark Award of the American Vacuum Society, and a John S. Guggenheim Fellowship.