Karthik Shankar

Area of Study / Keywords

Biomedical Engineering Microsystems and Nanodevices Photonics and Plasmas Solid State Electronics

About

Karthik Shankar received his B.Tech degree in 2000 from the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, India, where he was awarded the prestigious Governor’s Gold Medal for all-round excellence from his graduating class. Karthik Shankar was an Eastman Kodak Research Fellow in 2003. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering at Penn State University. He joined the department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Alberta as an Assistant Professor in the Fall of 2009. He is the author of 35 papers in refereed journals and has delivered numerous talks at major international conferences such as the Meetings of the Materials Research Society, the SPIE, the Device Research Conference and the Electronic Materials Conference. He is also listed as an inventor on two provisional patents. In 2010, he received the PetroCanada Young Innovator Award.

Research

Dr. Shankar’s research interests include the growth of nanotube and nanowire arrays in inorganic and organic semiconductors; the characterization of the optoelectronic properties of nanoscale materials; and the use of nanostructured materials to improve the performance of photovoltaic devices, thin film transistors and light emitting diodes. He is also interested in excitonics; colloidal quantum dots, quantum wires and π-conjugated molecules are excitonic semiconductors, due to which the understanding and control of excitonic creation and annihilation, migration, delocalization, coherence and dissociation are of fundamental importance. A major theme of his research is the understanding and exploitation of phenomena unique to nanotube and nanowire arrays, which originate in their spatial configuration, their size confinement and their anisotropy. He is also pursuing applications for semiconducting nanotube and nanowire arrays in catalysis and biology.

ECE 203 - Electrical Circuits II

Nonlinear circuit analysis. Diodes: ideal and simple and models, single phase rectifiers. Ideal and finite gain op-amps. Treatment of RLC circuits in the time domain, frequency domain and s-plane. Two port networks. Prerequisites: ECE 202 or E E 240. Corequisite: ECE 240 or E E 238. Credit may be obtained in only one of ECE 203 or E E 250.

ECE 458 - Introduction to Microelectromechanical Systems

Overview of microelectromechanical (MEMS) systems, applications of MEMS technology to radio frequency, optical and biomedical devices. Basic MEMS building blocks, cantilever and clamped-clamped beams. Actuation mechanisms of mechanical microdevices, thermal and electrostatic. The thin film fabrication process, deposition, lithography, etching and release. MEMS in circuits, switches, capacitors, and resonators. Prerequisites: ECE 370 or E E 315 or PHYS 381, and one of MAT E 201, PHYS 244, MEC E 250. Credit may be obtained in only one of ECE 458 or E E 458.

ECE 646 - Organic Electronics

Chemical structure, nomenclature, crystal structure and electronic structure of organic semiconductors. Charge carriers and charge transport in crystalline organic semiconductors, amorphous small-molecule organic semiconductors and conjugated polymers. Luminescence and energy transfer in organic semiconductors. Device applications including organic field effect transistors, organic light emitting diodes and organic solar cells. Characterization of organic semiconductors and devices.

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