Michael A. Filler Seminar
Professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech, Michael A. Filler, will deliver a department seminar titled, “Wiring the World for Ambient Compute ,” Tuesday, November 18th at 1:25 p.m. in room B75 Amundson Hall.
Abstract
Ambient compute weaves intelligence into everyday materials and surfaces so the physical world can sense, think, and respond. Imagine walls that map hidden microclimates to head off mold or peel-and-stick tapes on airframes that call out abnormal vibrations before failure. Delivering this vision means wiring the world with quadrillions of tiny, low-cost, low-power microelectronic systems—and a manufacturing process that unites scalability (large-area/roll-to-roll processing, self-assembly) with circuit composability (functional diversity, late-stage design freedom). Our central thesis is to separate semiconductor manufacturing from wiring in space and time: centralized fabs handle the “hard” work of building high-performance devices, while distributed printers perform the “easy” work of wiring those devices into circuits. We treat microscale and nanoscale integrated devices as “electronic reagents.” Devices drawn from a library are suspended and deposited onto commodity substrates (glass, plastics, paper). High-resolution additive metal printing then forms the interconnects, composing functional microsystems without returning to the fab. Several enabling projects are beginning to make this manufacturing flow practical: (1) modular microscale device design that maintains high electrical performance while tuning device structure, pad layouts, and passivation for efficient release into suspension, stable transport, and controlled deposition; (2) stochastictolerant assembly that images deposited devices, localizes them via computer vision, and uses adaptive, maskless sub-micron printing to interconnect them into working circuits.; and (3) bottom-up device manufacturing that employs nanomaterials synthesis and surface-chemistry-guided patterning to fabricate complete, high-quality devices. Together, these advances point toward a scalable route to heterogeneous, ultra-compact, ultra-low-power microsystems, uniting scalable manufacturing with design-time composability to help wire the world for ambient compute.
Michael A. Filler Biography
Dr. Michael A. Filler is a Professor and the Traylor Faculty Fellow in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. His research program focuses on developing processes that make microelectronics fabrication more accessible and widely available. Dr. Filler is also the Deputy Director of the Institute for Matter and Systems (IMS) and holds a courtesy appointment in the School of Materials Science and Engineering. Prior to joining the faculty at Georgia Tech, Dr. Filler earned a B.S. and Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Cornell University and Stanford University, respectively, and completed postdoctoral studies at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Filler has been recognized for his research and teaching with the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and Georgia Tech Sigma Xi Young Faculty Award.
