Nanotechnology: A Gentle Introduction to the Next Big Idea

Electronics

Mark Hersam is in the Materials Science Department at Northwestern. Hersam is a junior faculty member, whose independent career started only two years ago, but he has already begun to make a substantial name for himself whenever he can keep off the golf course. Starting with his doctoral work at the University of Illinois with Joe Lyding, Hersam has been a major developer of new methods for preparing and measuring nanostructures with important, unusual, and promising electronic properties.

Hersam's work is devoted to the subject of molecular electronics, the electronic properties of individual molecules. In ordinary circuits, this measurement could be done with a voltmeter, ammeter, or oscilloscope, but it is impossible to put a pair ...