First Experiences Teaching Experimental Nanoscale Science and Technology to Undergraduate Students

This paper describes our experiences teaching experimental nanoscale science and technology to undergraduate students at the University of Cincinnati for the first time. The interdisciplinary course is open to science and engineering students. A prerequisite for the course is taking the preceding course “Introduction to Nanoscale Science and Technology.” The experimental nanotechnology course is team taught by faculty members from the departments of physics, chemistry, chemical and materials engineering, and mechanical engineering. The course comprises of four laboratory modules. It was found that the students were very capable of performing the hands-on nanotechnology experiments. Lectures before the labs were critical to allow the students to understand the theory well enough to perform the experiments. The experiments and results are described in this paper.