WILLIAM P. KING
William P. King is heating things up.
A 2002 Stanford University graduate, thirty-year-old Dr. King is leading research into the hot topic of Thermomechanical Data Storage, an advanced MEMS-based data storage technique that uses heat transfer to write, read, and erase nano-mechanical data bits. King, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech's George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, contributed key technology for this technique between 1999 and 2001, spending eighteen months in Zurich working with IBM Research's Micro/NanoMechanics group.
Upon joining Georgia Tech in 2002, King began building on his background in nanotechnology tools by exploring dip pen nanolithography (DPN), an increasingly popular technique using atomic-force microscopy probes as pens to produce nanometer-scale patterns. Although in the past, scientists were unable to turn on and off writing from the liquid-covered probe tips, in 2004, King incorporated easily-melted solid inks and special probes with built-in heaters so that DPN writing could be turned on and off at will. Using King's new thermal DPN method, scientists are now able to produce features too small to be formed with light-based lithography. The method can also be used for nanoscale soldering to repair circuitry on semiconductor chips and to build nanostructures that could not otherwise be made.
King's work is already well recognized. In 2003, the National Science Foundation awarded King its Career Award. In 2004, he was invited to participate in the National Academy of Sciences' Keck Foundation Conference on Nanotechnology and was named the year's Outstanding Alumni at the University of Dayton's School of Engineering, the school from which he received his bachelor's degree in 1996. King sits on the scientific advisory board at several nanotechnology companies.
