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Anthony Annunziata ’05 has been named a 2004 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship winner, making him one of just 310 recipients selected from a national pool of 1,113 math, science, and engineering undergraduates.

Annunziata, a physics major from North Haven, Conn., is researching the high frequency conductible properties of carbon nanotubes.  The conductibility of nanotubes, he says, makes them potentially useful in the development of molecular electronics.

Annunziata hopes his research will allow him and others to eventually construct molecular electronics that are more reliable than today’s silicone-based technology.

Molecular electronics is an evolutionary idea, Annunziata explained.

“As electronic components get smaller and smaller, it is assumed that they will eventually require molecular-scale features.  There is a fundamental quantum mechanical limit to how small we can make silicon-based devices,” he said.  “Carbon nanotubes present probably the most promising candidate technology, though not the only possibility.”

Annunziata was first alerted to the Goldwater by Judy Fischer, fellowship coordinator for Career Services.  She nominated him for the scholarship; Annunziata completed the application and wrote a very technical essay describing his experiment, what he hoped to do with his research, and what he would be doing this semester and summer to facilitate it.

Winning, Annunziata said, was an honor.

“It’s a national award and I was excited to think I was competitive with other good physicists and scientists,” he said.

Annunziata gets $7,500 to apply toward his tuition.  The goal of the scholarship is to promote careers in the sciences and engineering at the undergraduate level, specifically to drum up interest in further graduate work.

Annunziata began working with associate professor of physics Beth Parks in the fall of 2003 as a research assistant in her laboratory.  His project sprang out of Parks’s previous work with nanotubes.  Annunziata plans to carry the nanotube project into next year as well, with the goal of obtaining results by next spring.

Parks and Annunziata are focusing on creating conducting nanotubes, good for making faster data transmission lines and other things in place of conventional wires, an important aspect of nanotube electronics development that has not been explored previously.  The pair is studying how those conducting tubes behave at high frequencies.

Annunziata’s research takes him to the Cornell Nanofabrication Facility (CNF) twice a week.  The CNF is part of a larger network of academic research facilities that focus on nanoscale devices and nanoscale experiments.

At CNF, Annunziata is creating the nanotubes he will eventually experiment with.  He is using photolithography, the same technique used to make small-scale integrated circuits, such as transistors, RAM, and other computer parts.

Annunziata will be at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this summer on a topic related to his current research, working in the Center for Material Science and Engineering.

He says that when he arrived at 51����, he had no idea what he wanted to major in.

“I liked physics, but it was more of a hobby than a career idea.  But the physics department, the professors, and the way they structure the courses got me really interested in physics.  The professors are really encouraging, and with a lot of schools it’s not like that,” he said.

“They’re encouraging of people majoring in physics just for the liberal arts aspect, even if you aren’t going to pursue it after college.”

Outside of his research and semiweekly trips to Ithaca, Annunziata is a member of the Physics Club and the Space Exploration Society.  He is also the technical manager of Student Activities Sound, which provides sound for on-campus venues.  He also has a minor in political science.

Jess Buchsbaum
Office of University Communications
315.228.6637