University of Delaware Office of Public Relations The Messenger Vol. 5, No. 3/1996 Perfecting a probe for microelectronics Daniel van der Weide, assistant professor of electrical engineering, has been called a rising star in his department, but his approach to research is very down-to-earth. With grants from the Office of Naval Research, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Ford Motor Co., the researcher says he is trying "to do things that are industrially relevant." In graduate school at Stanford University, van der Weide was part of an electrical engineering group with an applied physics emphasis that concentrated on breaking speed records for electronics. "We developed circuits for the world's shortest, electrically generated and detected pulses," he says. "In ultrafast electronics, a nanosecond [one-billionth of a second] seems like an eternity," he explains. Today, his research interests have expanded to include building ultra-small instruments for acquiring images that are otherwise invisible. Working with scanning probe microscopes, his goal is to build an integrated-circuit probe that can simultaneously sense both voltages and topography-on the scale of mere molecules-and present the data as an image. He likens it to a blind person's cane that simultaneously could detect touch and, say, temperature. "Billions of dollars have been spent developing integrated circuits for computer technology, but there are very few tools that can be used to map out the function of an integrated circuit as it's operating," he explains. "With the explosion of technology ushered in by microelectronics, it's becoming possible to build circuits on the scale of large molecules, but it's very difficult to test them. You can't get a conventional oscilloscope probe in there. So, that's what we're working on." It's interesting to note that van der Weide almost didn't go to college, let alone to graduate school. "After high school, I saw college only as a way to get a higher paying job and climb the corporate ladder. I had notions of farming instead." Coming from a small Iowa high school that didn't offer calculus, van der Weide chose to major in electrical engineering and, eventually, to minor in Latin at the University of Iowa, because of the challenges and opportunities they offered. "I got into electrical engineering largely through playing around with old appliances," he says. "I was the kind of kid who was always behind the phone company and stores, looking for old phones, televisions and toasters to fool around with." Although his undergraduate engineering career was punctuated by several summer positions in California's Silicon Valley, van der Weide found history repeating itself upon graduation. "I wasn't really prepared for graduate school," he recalls. But, after working full-time in industry for a year, he entered Stanford and, after graduation, worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Solid-State Research in Stuttgart, Germany. Summer employment opportunities with such firms as Hewlett- Packard and full-time work with Motorola and Watkins-Johnson are what really sealed his interest in electrical engineering, van der Weide says. They left him with a drive for industrial relevance in his research and a belief that what really matters in research is people. Keeping him grounded, he says, is his wife, Katrine, and his family, none of whom is "snowed by technology." "They keep reminding me that what's most important in life are human relationships. Engineering is really a people business, and success depends on enjoying your work and getting along with the larger community." -Beth Thomas