Equipment
Heightens Experiences of AAMU Students, Engineers
by Jerome
Saintjones
Huntsville, Alabama ---- State-of-the-art equipment
provided through a grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific
Research (AFOSR) will provide Alabama A&M University students
and electrical engineering professors some unparalleled research
experiences.
The new $350,000, three-in-one equipment is housed in
a nearly half-million dollar device characterization laboratory
built from scratch by Dr. Mohammad Alim. The JEOL JSM-6610LV
equipment functions as a scanning electron microscope (SEM); an
Oxford-produced energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS); and a
nanometer pattern generation system (NPGS) by the Nabity Company.
At a given time, about six undergraduate and graduate
students will be able to analyze amorphous, biological materials,
ceramics, junction devices, insulators, metals, semiconductors,
composites and other materials. Such analysis is essential, says
Alim, if electrical engineers and researchers are to continue to
make improvements to the everyday devices that consumers enjoy
today.
These more common devices include computers, microwave
devices, thermoelectrics, thermistors, nanowires, sensors,
detectors, surge protectors, as well as electrical components
(solid state and piezoelectric transformers, resisters, capacitors,
etc.), notes Professor Alim, who also procured more than half of
the equipment in his department’s ‘Class 1,000 clean room’ from
AFOSR, Missile Defense Agency, and NASA. He is also affiliated with
current Department of Defense and National Science Foundation
research that totals more than $800,000 over the next three years.
Alim has authored more than 70 research papers since
joining Alabama A&M University in fall 1998, in addition to
proceedings, book chapters and other published work in important
physics, device, materials science, and electroceramics journals.
He believes the new equipment will allow AAMU students to become
more prolific in published student-oriented research, as well.
Further, Alim and colleagues are continuing their efforts to
procure outside funding to support AAMU students and engineering
facilities.
For more information about the electrical engineering
equipment, contact Dr. Alim at (256) 372-5562.
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