Commentary

Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Nanoscience/Nanotechnology Delegation to Republic of China (Taiwan)

Da Hsuan Feng - Vice President for Research and Graduate Education at The University of Texas at Dallas

Preamble

During the past four years, the successes of SPRING (Strategic Partnership for Research in NanotechnoloGy), a multi-Texas universities consortium initiated and championed by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, have been due in no small part to the logistical and organizational leadership of Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and the participation of the outstanding scientists in Air Force Material Research Laboratory (AFMRL) in Wright - Patterson Air Force Base.

It is remarkable that from 2002 until 2005, SPRING has received $26.5 million funding from AFOSR. The request for 2006 is $17.5 million. As one can imagine, with such a large infusion of resources, the landscape of nanoscience/nanotechonology research of Texas has taken on a new look and has earned some global visibility.

SPRING began in 2002 with four entities: UT Dallas, UT Austin, Rice University and AFMRL. A year later, UT Arlington became a member. In 2004, the University of Houston joined the consortium. In addition, through the "Nano-at-the-border" program, UT Brownsville and UT Pan Am have become integral parts of the program.

The AFOSR program manager responsible for SPRING, Dr. Harold Weinstock, has been relentless in assisting the universities in building their program. Weinstock's activities were strongly supported by AFOSR's Director of Physics and Electronics Directorate, Dr. Jack Agee. Their vision is that SPRING should develop nanoscience/nanotechnology beyond the Texas borders.

Indeed, Agee and Weinstock's interests do not stop at the border of United States. In 2000, they initiated a program working with Taiwan. In close collaboration with Taiwan's National Science Council (NSC), AFOSR organized two AFOSR - NSC workshops in nanoscience and funded some of Taiwan's most outstanding scientists to pursue basic nanoscience research.

The next step in the AFOSR Taiwan program, envisioned by Agee and Weinstock and the leadership of NSC, was the creation of a platform and atmosphere for SPRING scientists to collaborate with Taiwan scientists.

The Taiwan Trip

In April of 2005, Drs. Agee and Weinstock led an AFOSR delegation to visit numerous research centers in Taiwan. The delegation members included LtCol (Reserve) Anne Fay and Capt (Reserve) J Tringe, the out-going and in-coming Program Managers, respectively, for AFOSR's Taiwan program, and Dr. Brett Pokines of Air Force Office of Aerospace Research and Development stationed in Tokyo. Dr. Pokines is Air Force's contract officer for the program.With the intention of promoting collaboration between SPRING and Taiwan universities, Dr. Weinstock invited me as the Chair of SPRING's Executive Council and Professor Paul C. W. Chu - both the newest member of SPRING from the University of Houston and President of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology - to join the delegation.

Since this was a senior level AFOSR delegation, our primary host in ROC (Taiwan) was Minister Mau-Kuen Wu ("MK", as he is known to his friends), Chairman of NSC. Since NSC is a ministerial level government organization, its Chairman is a cabinet member of the Prime Minister. It is worth noting that in the mid- eighties, Paul and MK, then of University of Houston and University of Alabama, Huntsville, respectively, made international sensational scientific news when they and their team discovered a material exhibiting 90 K superconductivity. An entirely new field of material science called "High Tc" emerged from their discovery.

Taiwan Wants Two World Class Universities

Taiwan's higher education has experience explosive growth during the last decade. There are now some 160 institutions with "university" status throughout the island of 23 million people. The Ministry of Education (MOE) announced that within the next several decades, Taiwan should have two "world class universities." To reach this goal, MOE will provide massive funding - billions of US dollars. One of the two schools targeted for this status is the National Taiwan University, commonly known as Taida. Unquestionably, throughout the 20th century, the pervading perception in Taiwan was that Taida was the most prestigious university. Today, it still is. The other choice is apparently still in question.

Two years ago, four universities in Taiwan, National Tsing Hua University (NTHU), National Chiao- Tong University (NCTU), National Central University (NCU) and National Yang Ming University (NYMU), became a university system named "University System of Taiwan" or UST for short. The System has a Chancellor Office and each university has its own president and significant autonomy.

NTHU and NCTU, each with approximately 5000 students and known for their depths in science and technology, sit geographically next to each other in Hsinchu, sometimes called the "Taiwan silicon valley". Hsinchu is about 60 miles south of Taipei (and is a sister city of Plano of Texas). NCU, a comprehensive university of 10,000 students, also has considerable strengths in humanities and management. Geographically it is in Chungli, half way between Hsinchu and Taipei. Finally, NYMU, a medical university, is in Taipei, next door to the famous Veteran Hospital. Thus the logic of forming UST seems transparent. Individually, each university may be strong in some areas, together they are strong in all.

It seems to me that a well organized UST could in fact benefit all four institutions. Indeed, if UST can be viewed as one entity, with its powerful Chancellor be the de facto spokesman, it is conceivable that the entire system could emerge as the strong 2nd candidate to achieve world-class status in Taiwan. However, I learned from this trip that there may be some uncertainty about the future of UST, which may hinder its chances.

In the southern part of Taiwan, there is the National Cheng Kung University (NCKU). Traditionally, NCKU is known for its science and engineering strengths. I understand it has a considerable nanoscience/nanotechnology presence. NCKU also is a likely candidate for the 2nd spot. It was unfortunate that due to its distance from Taipei and our tight schedule, the full delegation was unable to visit NCKU. However, one of the members, LtCol Anne Fay visited after the official delegation departed.

Old Friends

We visited the National Taiwan University and three universities of UST: NTHU, NCTU and NCU. I should mention that at NCU, my old friend President Chuan Sheng Liu, was our gracious host. President Liu was formerly Vice President for Research and a distinguished hydrodynamist at the University of Maryland. It was indeed great to see him again, after so many years.

Of course, no visit to Taiwan's research establishment is complete without visiting Academia Sinica (in Chinese it is known as Central Research Academy or Zhong Yang Yan Jiu Yuan). I was pleased to see that an old friend of mine, Dr. Ting-Kuo Lee, was our host. "TK," as he is fondly known as by his friends, now holds the title Distinguished Research Fellow of Academia Sinica. Previously a professor of physics at Virginia Polytechic Institute and State University, he moved to Taiwan and is currently the Executive Director of the National Science and Technology Program for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. This program is de facto Taiwan's version of our NNTI. All members of our delegation could detect TK's fingerprints in many Taiwan's scientific developments in the past decade.

National Taiwan University

Our first stop on the morning of April 18 was the Center for Condensed Matter Sciences of National Taiwan University. Our primary host was Professor Cheng-Hsuan Chen, Director of the Center. I learned from Paul that Professor Chen just returned to Taiwan a couple years ago, after many years of being a distinguished material scientist in Bell Laboratories in New Jersey.

According to Dr. Chen, the Center is "soft," in that it has no physical structure. Its annual funding is about $US2.7 million and most of that is devoted to nanoscience. Throughout the morning, we were given many presentations by faculty members and scientists, both junior and senior, associated with the Center. All faculty members have home departments in chemistry, physics and electrical engineering.

Samples of the titles of talks include:

• White- light generation and color micro- display with semiconductor nanostructures
• Microscopic studies of Fullerene on metal surfaces: the role of adsorbate induced reconstruction and its implications
• Core facility at NTU-Scanning Transmission Electron Microscope (STEM)
  • The purchase of this very expansive and multifunctional equipment was the result of a special grant from the previously mentioned "National Science and Technology Program for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology" with TK as the Executive Director. We were told that this STEM is the only one in existence in Asia.

Academia Sinica

In his opening remarks, TK said that nanoscience/nanotechnology research now constitutes one of the central activities of the Academia. Indeed, within the Institute of Physics, there is considerable push to study physics which is biologically "inspired." This is quite a remarkable development, considering that the institute had a strong tradition of pursuing subatomic research. Research in nanotechnology in the Academia attracted scientists from all walks of interests. TK said that "more than 30 Researchers from Institutes of Physics, Chemistry, Atomic and Molecular Sciences and Research Center for Applied Science participate in this program. All of these institutes also put in quite a lot of their own resources in 'nano' research." Total funding since 2003 is approximately $US7 million (this does not include purchase and maintenance of many highly sophisticated research tools).

The breadth and depth of nanoscience in the Academia, as exhibited in all the excellent presentations by scientists from the Academia, is quite impressive. There were frequent mention of terms such as "micro-fluidics" and "toxicity," both areas of considerable interest worldwide in this field.

The last talk during our visit was given by Dr. Yeukuang Hwu on "real time radiology in micro and nano scale." His energetic and enthusiastic presentation certainly caught the delegation's special attention. By necessity, this work has already created significant international collaborations, especially since it requires the state-of-the-art Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SRC) in Pohang, Korea. Apparently the SRC of Taiwan, which is in Hsinchu and constructed about a decade ago, is unable to deliver the necessary light-beam demanded by this project. We learned from Dr. Hwu that even President Roh of the Republic of Korea has pledged support for this program.

University System of Taiwan (National Chiao Tong University, National Tsing Hua University and National Central University)

As far as the delegation can surmise, UST's research in nanotechnology and nanoscience research falls under the umbrella of a virtual center called Center for Nano-Science and Technology. Government funding for the center has been quite robust in the past couple of years. This is perhaps why we saw many very sophisticated new equipments and large number of scientists in all three universities working in nanoscience. For example, in NCTU, we were told that there are over 100 scientists who are part of the center, and this number does not include students and visitors.

As I mentioned earlier, NCTU and NTHU are embedded physically in Taiwan's "silicon valley." Surrounding these two universities are the powerful and world renowned semiconductor companies, such as TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation). A government owned industrial research establishment called ITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute) also is next door. Some would say that ITRI has played an important, if not pivotal, role in driving Taiwan to become a global high- tech jewel. So, it is not surprising that the nano research in these two universities appear to have strong semiconductor flavor, with of course a nanotech touch.

After our visits to NCTU and NTHU in Hsinchu, we went to National Central University (NCU). The delegation was pleased to see President Liu was waiting at the doorstep of NCU's central administration building.

Although NCU took on the original name, which was one of the most prestigious universities in China in Nanjing before 1949, its current reincarnation only began 30 years ago. Many of the faculty members in nanoscience here have either just returned, or returned not long ago, from outstanding universities in North America. As in NCTU and NTHU, research in nanoscience in NCU is also intense and exciting, with strong emphasis in opto-electronics. I am very pleased to hear terms like "photonic crystals" and "negative reflective index materials". These are terms I hear often uttered by UT Dallas' researchers, especially Anvar Zakhidov and Vladimir Agranovich.

Epilogue

While in the past several years I have the privileged of knowing how Dr. Weinstock worked, this is the first time I saw first- hand the AFOSR Taiwan team, led by Dr. Agee and Dr. Weinstock, operates. I also was happy to see how the scientific leadership in Taiwan, led by outstanding scientists such as MK and TK, is able to galvanize Taiwan's nanoscience community.

The future between SPRING and our colleagues in Taiwan, if we work at it, can be very bright indeed.