The innovation engine for new materials

Brittany Christy

University: 

Santa Barbara City College

Major: 

Computer Engineering

Site Abroad: 

Tyndall National Institute, Ireland

Mentor(s): 

Georgios Fagas
Lida Ansari

Faculty Sponsor(s): 

Jim Greer

Project Title: 

Development of a Graphical User Interface for a Quantum Transport Simulator

Project Description: 

    In order to increase the performance of electronics, the size of components such as transistors must continue to decrease. Although the ultimate size limit of a transistor is measured on the atomic scale, conventional microelectronics design techniques will not be able to continue miniaturization long enough to reach this point. A possible alternative could be the field of molecular electronics; assembling electronic devices from single molecules or atoms. In order to make this dream a reality, a complete quantum mechanical understanding of the electronic transport through individual molecules will be necessary, which will rely heavily on computer simulation tools. My research goal was to develop a graphical user interface (GUI) to create the input files for an electron transport simulation program called TIMES (developed by the Tyndall National Institute Theory Modeling and Design group), in order to make it a more usable tool. I accomplished this by using the object oriented Java programming language, in addition to the SWT (Standard Widget Toolkit), a rich Java GUI library made for writing applications. The result was a functional user interface which provides detailed explanations of the TIMES calculation parameters, as well as a menu option to reference the manual if needed, and the capability to save and load multiple files. Future improvements will aim to enhance the application’s efficiency and portability.