Atomic Engineering is a multi-disciplinary field that combines disciplines such as physics, chemistry, electrical engineering, materials science, and mechanical engineering. It provides the means to understand matter and to design and control its properties.

The 20th century has witnessed the phenomenal rise of Natural Science and Technology into all aspects of human life. Three major sciences have emerged and marked this century: Physical Science which has strived to understand the structure of atoms through quantum mechanics, Life Science which has attempted to understand the structure of cells and the mechanisms of life through biology and genetics, and Information Science which has symbiotically developed the communicative and computational means to advance Natural Science.

Microelectronics has become one of today’s principle enabling echnologies supporting these three major sciences and touches every aspect of human life: food, energy, transportation, communication, entertainment, health medicine and exploration.

Although impressive progress has been achieved, microelectronics is still far from being able to imitate Nature in terms of integration density, functionality and performance. For example, a state-ofthe-art low power Pentium II processor consumes nearly twice as much power as a human brain, while it has 1000 times fewer transistors than the number of cells in a human brain. Forecasts show that the current microelectronics technology is not expected to reach similar levels because of its physical limitations.

A different approach has thus been envisioned for future advances in semiconductor science and technology in the 21^st century. This will consist of reaching closer to the structure of atoms, by employing nanoscale electronics. Indeed, the history of microelectronics has been, itself, characterized by a constant drive to imitate natural objects (e.g. the brain cell) and thus move towards lower dimensions in order to increase integration density, system functionality and performance (e.g. speed and power consumption).

Thanks to nanoelectronics, it will not be unforeseeable in the near future to create artificial atoms, molecules, and integrated multifunctional nanoscale systems. For example, as illustrated above the structure of an atom can be likened to that of a so called “quantum dot” or “Q-dot” where the threedimensional potential well of the quantum dot replaces the nucleus of an atom. An artificial molecule can then be made from artificial atoms. Such artificial molecules will have the potential to revolutionize the performance of optoelectronics and electronics by achieving, for example, orders of magnitude higher speed processors and denser memories. With these artificial atoms/molecules as building blocks, artificial active structures such as nanosensors, nano-machines and smart materials will be made possible.

last updated 1/31/2007